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EDWARD IOXOI, DOYEB SHEET 



THE 



WORKS 



OF 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 



N 



KDTTED 



BY MRS. SHELLEY. 



A NEW EDITION. 






LONDON: 
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 



.0 



* /0 



^ 



LONDON ! 
RADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFEIARS. 






THE 



POETICAL WORKS 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



BY MRS. SHELLEY. 



Lui non trov' io ; ma suoi santi vestigi 

Tutti rivolti alia superna strada 

Veggio, lunge da' laghi averni e stigi. — Petraeca. 



PERCY FLORENCE SHELLEY, 
Ei)e loettcal OTJotfes 

OF HIS ILLUSTRIOUS FATHER/ 

ARE DEDICATED 
BY HIS AFFECTIONATE MOTHER, 



MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY. 



London, 

20th January, 1839. 



PREFACE 



BY THE EDITOR. 



Obstacles have long existed to my presenting the public with a perfect edition 
of Shelley's Poems. These being at last happily removed, I hasten to fulfil an 
important duty, — that of giving the productions of a sublime genius to the world, 
with all the correctness possible, and of, at the same time, detailing the history of 
those productions, as they sprung, living and warm, from his heart and brain. I 
abstain from any remark on the occurrences of his private life ; except, inasmuch as 
the passions which they engendered, inspired his poetry. This is not the time to 
relate the truth ; and I should reject any colouring of the truth. No account of 
these events has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, either as 
regards himself or others ; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark, that 
the errors of action, committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, 
as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed, by those who loved him, in the 
firm conviction, that were they judged impartially, his character would stand in 
fairer and brighter light than that ef any contemporary. Whatever faults he had, 
ought to find extenuation among his fellows, since they proved him to be human ; 
without them, the exalted nature of his soul would have raised him into something 
divine. 

The qualities that struck any one newly introduced to Shelley, were, first, a gentle 
and cordial goodness that animated his intercourse with warm affection, and helpful 
sympathy. The other, the eagerness and ardour with which he was attached to the 
cause of human happiness and improvement ; and the fervent eloquence with which 
he discussed such subjects. His conversation was marked by its happy abundance, 
and the beautiful language in which he clothed his poetic ideas and philosophical 
notions. To defecate life of its misery and its evil, was the ruling passion of his 
soul: he dedicated to it every power of his mind, every pulsation of his heart. 
He looked on political freedom as the direct agent to effect the happiness of man- 
kind ; and thus any new-sprung hope of liberty inspired a joy and an exultation 
more intense and wild than he could have felt for any personal advantage. Those 
who have never experienced the workings of passion on general and unselfish subjects 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



cannot understand this ; and it must be difficult of comprehension to the younger 
generation rising around, since they cannot remember the scorn and hatred with 
which the partisans of reform were regarded some few years ago, nor the perse- 
cutions to which they were exposed. He had been from youth the victim of the 
state of feeling inspired by the reaction of the French Revolution ; and believing 
firmly in the justice and excellence of his views, it cannot be wondered that a nature 
as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put its whole force into the 
attempt to alleviate for others the evils of those systems from which he had himself 
suffered. Many advantages attended his birth ; he spurned them all when balanced 
with what he considered his duties. He was generous to imprudence, devoted to 
heroism. 

These characteristics breathe throughout his poetry. The struggle for human 
weal ; the resolution firm to martyrdom ; the impetuous pursuit ; the glad triumph 
in good ; the determination not to despair. Such were the features that marked those 
of his works which he regarded with most complacency, as sustained by a lofty 
subject and useful aim. 

In addition to these, his poems may be divided into two classes,' — the purely imagi- 
native, and those which sprung from the emotions of his heart. Among the former 
may be classed " The Witch of Atlas," " Adonais," and his latest composition, left 
imperfect, " The Triumph of Life." In the first of these particularly, he gave the 
reins to his fancy, and luxuriated in every idea as it rose ; in all, there is that sense 
of mystery which formed an essential portion of his perception of life — a clinging to 
the subtler inner spirit, rather than to the outward form — a curious and metaphysical 
anatomy of human passion and perception. 



The second class is, of course, the more popular, as appealing at once to emotions 
common to us all ; some of these rest on the passion of love ; others on grief and 
despondency ; others on the sentiments inspired by natural objects. Shelley's con- 
ception of love was exalted, absorbing, allied to all that is purest and noblest in our 
nature, and warmed by earnest passion ; such it appears when he gave it a voice in 
verse. Yet he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, except when highly 
idealised ; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had cast aside, unfinished, and 
they were never seen by me till after I had lost him. Others, as for instance, 
u Rosalind and Helen," and *' Lines written among the Euganean Hills," I found 
among his papers by chance ; and with some difficulty urged him to complete them. 
There are others, such as the ei Ode to the Sky Lark," and " The Cloud/' which, in 
the opinion of many critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his pro- 
ductions. They were written as his mind prompted, listening to the carolling of 
the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy ; or marking the cloud as it sped across the 
heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His 
extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuits ; and 
rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects, as well as to 
his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the 
disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, 
fraught with pain ; to escape from such, he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt 
happy when he sheltered himself from the influence of human sympathies, in the 
wildest regions of fancy. His imagination has been termed too brilliant, his thoughts 
too subtle. He loved to idealise reality ; and this is a taste shared by few. We are 
willing to have our passing whims exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity ; 
but few of us understand or sympathise with the endeavour to ally the love of 
abstract beauty, and adoration of abstract good, the to dyadov koL to ko\6v of the 
Socratic philosophers, with our sympathies with our kind. In this Shelley resembled 
Plato ; both taking more delight in the abstract and the ideal, than in the special 
and tangible. This did not result from imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided 
in Italy that he made Plato his study ; he then translated his Symposium and his 
Ion ; and the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition, than Plato's 
Praise of Love, translated by Shelley. To return to his own poetry. The luxury 
of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself, as a child burthens itself with 
spring flowers, thinking of no use beyond the enjoyment of gathering them, often 
showed itself in his verses : they will be only appreciated by minds which have 
resemblance to his own ; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share 
the same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterises much of what he has 
written, was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from those whose 
scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he considered the true and 
good, he was himself particularly attached. There is much, however, that speaks 
to the many. When he would consent to dismiss these huntings after the obscure, 
which, entwined with his nature as they were, he did with difficulty, no poet ever 
expressed in sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, the gentler or 
more forcible emotions of the soul. 

A wise friend once wrote to Shelley, " You are still very young, and in certain 
essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you are so." It is seldom 
that the young know what youth is, till they have got beyond its period ; and time 
was not given him to attain this knowledge. It must be remembered that there is 
the stamp of such inexperience on all he wrote ; he had not completed his nine-and- 
twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not add the seal of the 
virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by the vehement spirit of youth. 
Through life also he was a martyr to ill health, and constant pain wound up his 
nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those 
of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in 
manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch ; and thus, during a short life, 
had gone through more experience of sensation, than many whose existence is pro- 
tracted. " If I die to-morrow," he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, " I 
have lived to be older than my father." The weight of thought and feeling burdened 
him heavily ; you read his sufferings in his attenuated frame, while you perceived 
the mastery he held over them in his animated countenance and brilliant eyes. 

lie died, and the world showed no outward sign ; but his influence over mankind, 
though slow in growth, is fast augmenting, and in the ameliorations that have taken 
place in the political state of his country, we may trace in part the operation of his 
arduous struggles. His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, 
though late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the liberty 
he so fondly loved. 

He died, and his place among those who knew him intimately, has never been 
filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort and benefit — to 
enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of genius, to cheer it with his sympa- 
thy and love. Any one, once attached to Shelley, must feel all other affections, 
however true and fond, as wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our best 
consolation to know that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us, 
and now exists where we hope one day to join him ; — although the intolerant, in 
their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of Good, who can judge the 
heart, never rejected him. 



In the notes appended to the poems, I have endeavoured to narrate the origin and 
history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers which refer to his early life, 
renders the execution more imperfect than it would otherwise have been. I have, 
however, the liveliest recollection of all that was done and said during the period of 
my knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and I have 
no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they go. In other respects, 
I am, indeed, incompetent ; but I feel the importance of the task, and regard it as 
my most sacred duty. I endeavour to fulfil it in a manner he would himself approve ; 
and hope in this publication to lay the first stone of a monument due to Shelley's 
genius, his sufferings, and his virtues : 

S' al seguir son tarda, 
Forse avverrk che '1 bel nome gentile 
Consacrerd con questa stanca penna. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



POSTSCRIPT. 

la revising this new edition, and carefully consulting Shelley's scattered and 
confused papers, I found a few fragments which had hitherto escaped me, and was 
enabled to complete a few poems hitherto left unfinished. What at one time escapes 
the searching eye, dimmed by its own earnestness, becomes clear at a future period. 
By the aid of a friend I also present some poems complete and correct, which hitherto 
have been defaced by various mistakes and omissions. It was suggested that the 
Poem u To the Queen of my Heart," was falsely attributed to Shelley. I certainly 
find no trace of it among his papers, and as those of his intimate friends whom I 
have consulted never heard of it, I omit it. 

Two Poems are added of some length, " Swellfoot the Tyrant," and " Peter Bell 
the Third." I have mentioned the circumstances under which they were written in 
the notes ; and need only add, that they are conceived in a very different spirit from 
Shelley's usual compositions. They are specimens of the burlesque and fanciful ; but 
although they adopt a familiar style and homely imagery, there shine through the 
radiance of the poet's imagination the earnest views and opinions of the politician and 
the moralist. 

At my request the publisher has restored the omitted passages of Queen Mab. — 
I now present this edition as a complete collection of my husband's poetical works, 
and I do not foresee that I can hereafter add to or take away a word or line. 



Putney, November 6th, 1839. 



CONTENTS. 



— # — 

PAGE 

QUEEN MAB 1 

TO HARRIET ****. . . „ ,.3 

NOTES ••••...19 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR . ... c .... . ,.37 

ALASTOR ; OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE ........ 41 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR 47 

^THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. A POEM, IN TWELVE CANTOS .... 48 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR 96 

v PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. A LYRICAL DRAMA, IN FOUR ACTS ... 98 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR 125 

v THE CENCI. A TRAGEDY, IN FIVE ACTS 129 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR 157 

RELATION OF THE DEATH OF THE FAMILY OF THE CENCI 160 

HELLAS. A LYRICAL DRAMA 166 

NOTES 178 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR . . 179 

CEDIPUS TYRANNUS; OR SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. A TRAGEDY, IN 

TWO ACTS 181 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR . .» 191 

EARLY POEMS- 
MUTABILITY .••••••■ 192 

ON DEATH ... i ..... ib. 

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD, LECHDALE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE ib. 

TO **** 193 



CONTENTS. 



EARLY POEMS— 

BXANXA& APRIL, 1814 

urns 



PAOK 

193 
ib. 



TO WORDSWORTH 194 

FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE ib. 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR . . ib. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVI.— 

THE SUNSET 

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 

MONT BLANC. LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI 
NOTE BY THE EDITOR 



195 

ib. 
196 
197 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVI I.— 

PRINCE ATHANASE. A FRAGMENT 198 

part i ib. 

KtAGMENTS OF PRINCE ATHANASE. PART II 199 

FRAGMENT I . ib. 

FRAGMENT II. 200 

FRAGMENT III. ib. 

FRAGMENT IV 201 

Marianne's dream ib. 

TO CONSTANTLY SINGING 202 

TO CONSTANTIA ... 203 

DEATH ib. 

SONNET. — OZTMANDIAS ib. 



ON F. G. 


ib. 


LINES TO A CRITIC 


ib. 


LINES 


ib. 



NOTE BY THE EDITOR 



204 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVIIL— 

ROSALIND AND HELEN .... 
LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
JULIAN AND MADDALO. A CONVERSATION 
PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES 

THE PAST 

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE 

TO MARY 

ON A FADED VIOLET 



206 

217 

220 

225 

ib. 

226 

ib. 

ib. 

MISERY. A FRAGMENT 227 

STANZAS. WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NFAR NAPLliS ib. 

MAZENGUI 228 



» CONTENTS. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVTTT — page 

SONG FOR TASSO . 228 

SONNET ib. 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR 229 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXTX. 

THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY 



PETER BELL THE THIRD 

PART I. DEATH 

PART II. THE DEVIL .... . 

PART III. HELL 

PART IV. SIN 

PART V. GRACE 

PART VI. DAMNATION 

PART VII. DOUBLE DAMNATION .... 
LINES WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION 
SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND 



. 231 
. 236 
. 238 
. 239 
. 240 
. 241 
. 242 
. 243 
. 245 
. 247 
. ib. 



SIMILES, FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819 ib. 

AN ODE, TO THE ASSERTORS OF LIBERTY 248 

ENGLAND IN 1819 ib. 

ODE TO HEAVEN ft. 

ODE TO THE WEST WIND 24.Q 

AN EXHORTATION ib. 

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY 250 

ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDI DA VINCI, IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY . . . . ib. 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR •••......... 251 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXX.- 

THE SENSITIVE PLANT 

PART I. .... 

PART II 

PART III. .... 

CONCLUSION . 
A VISION OF THE SEA 

THE CLOUD 

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY 

TO .... 



TO A SKYLARK 

ODE TO LIBERTY ....... 

ARETHUSA 

SONG OF PROSERPINE, WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAlW OF ENNA 
HYMN OF APOLLO .... 



. 254 

. fb. 
. 255 
ib. 
. 257 
. ib. 
. 259 
. ib. 
. ib. 
. 260 
. 261 
. 263 
. 264 
. ib. 



CON fENTS! 



- W lil I ri'.N IN Mlt'Vt \\ paob 

hymn o\ I'VN ..... . ...... 264 

aa Qmnov 2 *>v5 

mil KB. \n \ii MORI ib. 

I 1 vi;i \ QKBOftffl 26G 

mvky. OR lii.u OBJBCnilO TO IBM FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CON- 
rviMNt; NO in man interest 268 

WITCH Of All \S . lb, 

274 

UN. a DIBOI • 276 

Tin: \v\MNi; HOOK ib. 

in ib* 

LIBERTY il>. 

TO THE MOON &. 

SUMMER AND WINTER ...... 277 

THE TOWER OF FAMINE ib. 

AN ALLEGORY .... . ib. 

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS ....,...-,-, ib* 

SONNET ib. 

LINES TO A REVIEWER ib. 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR 278 

POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXXI.— 

epipsychidion : verses addressed to the noble and unfortunate lady emilia 

v now imprisoned in the convent of 280 

adonais j an elegy on the death of john keats . 286 

toe**v*** 292 

TIME ib. 

FROM THE ARABIC. AN IMITATION ib. 

TO NIGHT ib. 

TO ib. 

MUTABILITY 293 

THE FUGITIVES ib. 

LINES ib. 

TO . .... 294 

SONG b. 

TO ib. 

LINES WRITTEN ON HEARING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON . . . 295 

A FRAGMENT lb. 

GINEVRA . ib. 

THE DIRGE ,.,.., 297 

EVENING. PONTE A MARE, PISA lb. 



CONTENTS. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXXL— paor 

to-morrow 297 

A BRIDAL SONG ib. 

A LAMENT ib. 

THE BOAT, ON THE SERCHIO 298 

THE AZIOLA ib. 

A FRAGMENT 299 

to ib. 

GOOD-NIGHT ib. 

LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR lb. 

music ib. 

to 300 

A LAMENT ib. 

SONNET. POLITICAL GREATNESS ib. 

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR •> • • • • ib. 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR .... •••••-». 301 

POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXXII.— 

THE ZUCCA 303 

TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR 304 

THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER PATIENT ib. 

FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA . . 6 , S&5 

T0 306 

THE INVITATION , ib. 



THE RECOLLECTION 

A SONG 

LINES 

THE ISLE .... 

A DIRGE .... 
CHARLES THE FIRST, A FRAGMENT 
THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 
FRAGMENTS ... 

NOTE BY THE EDITOR . 



307 

308 

ib. 

ib. 
ib. 



313 

319 

322 

PREFACE TO THE VOLUME OF POSTHUMOUS POEMS PUBLISHED IN l822 . . 327 



TRANSLATIONS- 
HYMNS OF HOMER 

HYMN TO MERCURY 

TO CASTOR AND POLLUX 

TO THE MOON . ... 

■ TO THE SUN 

— TO THE EARTH, MOTHER OF ALL fo 

— TO MINERVA m j^ 



331 

338 
ib. 






CONTENTS. 



NS1 \ PIONS 

Tin [RIG DRAMA, ikwsi, \ti.i> PROM THE GREEK OP EURIPIDES 

SIM Kir Of n \to. i EU M Tin-: QRESK ........ 

PROM nu: 0REBE 

ro Ri i iv 

PROM PLATO ... ........ 

SONNKVS PROM THE ORBEB OP MOSCHUS . . .... 

PROM rm. iTALivv OP DANTE 

i \GICO PRODIGIOSO " OP CALDERON . . . , 

IR FAUST OF GOETHE 



PAGB 

340 

ib. 
349 

ib. 

ib. 

ib. 

ib. 
350 
358 



THE 



OF 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 







TO HARRIET *****. 


Whose is the love that, gleaming through the world, 


Harriet ! on thine : — thou wert my purer mind ; 


Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn ? 


Thou wert the inspiration of my song ; 


Whose is the warm and partial praise, 


Thine are these early wilding flowers, 


Virtue's most sweet reward ? 


Though garlanded by me. 


Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul 


Then press into thy breast this pledge of love, 


Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow ? 


And know, though time may change and years may 


Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on, 


Each flow'ret gathered in my heart [roll, 


And loved mankind the more % 


It consecrates to thine. 


QUEE1N 


r MAB. 


i. 


Will Ianthe wake again, 


How wonderful is Death, 


And give that faithful bosom joy 


Death and his brother Sleep ! 


Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 


One, pale as yonder waning moon, 


Light, life, and rapture, from her smile ? 


With lips of lurid blue ; 




The other, rosy as the morn 


Yes ! she will wake again, 


When throned on ocean's wave, 


Although her glowing limbs are motionless, 


It blushes o'er the world : 


And silent those sweet lips, 


Yet both so passing wonderful ! 


Once breathing eloquence 




That might have soothed a tiger's rage, 


Hath then the gloomy Power 


Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror. 


Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 


Her dewy eyes are closed, 


Seized on her sinless soul % 


And on their lids, whose texture fine 


Must then that peerless form 


Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath, 


Which love and admiration cannot view 


The baby Sleep is pillowed : 


Without a beating heart, those azure veins 


Her golden tresses shade 


Which steal like streams along a field of snow, 


The bosom's stainless pride, 


That lovely outline, which is fair 


Curbing like tendrils of the parasite 


As breathing marble, perish 1 


Around a marble column. 


Must putrefaction's breath 




Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 


Hark ! whence that rushing sound ? 


But loathsomeness and ruin ? 


'Tis like the wondrous strain 


Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, 


That round a lonely ruin swells, 


On which the lightest heart might moralize ? 


Which, wandering on the echoing shore, 


Or is it only a sweet slumber 


The enthusiast hears at evening : 


Stealing o'er sensation, 


'Tis softer than the west wind's sigh : 


Which the breath of roseate morning 


'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes 


Chaseth into darkness ? 


Of that strange lyre whose strings 

B 



QUEEN MM-- 



genii of the breezes sweep : 
Those linos of rainbow light 
A iv like the moonbeams when they fall 
Through some cathedral window, but the teints 
sneh as may not find 
Comparison on earth. 

Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen ! 

-tial oonrsers paw the unyielding air ; 
Their filmy pennons at her word they furl, 

And stop obedient to the reins of light : 
These thfl Queen of Spells drew in, 
Sin- spread a charm around the spot, 

And leaning graceful from the ethereal car, 
Lonu r did she gaze, and silently, 
I' pon the Blumbering maid. 

Oh ! not the visioned poet in his dreams, 
When silveryelouds float throughthewildered brain, 
When every sight of lovely, wild and grand. 
Astonishes, enraptures, elevates — 
When fancy at a glance combines 
The wond*rous and the beautiful, — 
So 1 right, so fair, so wild a shape 
I lath ever yet beheld, 
As that which reined the coursers of the air, 
And poured the magic of her gaze 
Upon the sleeping maid. 

The broad and yellow moon 
Shone dimly through her form — 

That form of faultless symmetry ; 

The pearly and pellucid car 

Moved not the moonlight's line : 
'Twas not an earthly pageant ; 

Those who had look'd upon the sight, 
Passing all human glory, 
Saw not the yellow moon, 
Saw not the mortal scene, 
Heard not the night-wind's rush, 
Heard not an earthly sound, 
Saw but the fairy pageant, 
Heard but the heavenly strains 
That filled the lonely dwelling. 

The Fairy's frame was slight ; yon fibrous cloud, 
That catches but the palest tinge of even, 
And which the straining eye can hardly seize 
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow, 
Were scarce so thin, so slight ; but the fair star 
That gems the glittering coronet of morn, 
Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, 
A& that which, bursting from the Fairy's form, 
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, 
Yet with an undulating motion, 
Swayed to her outline gracefully. 

From her celestial car 

The Fairy Queen descended, 

And thrice she waved her wand 

Circled with wTeaths of amaranth : 
Her thin and misty form 
Moved with the moving air, 
And the clear silver tones, 
As thus she spoke, were such 

As are unheard by all but gifted ear. 



Stars ! your balmiest influence shed 
Elements ! your wrath suspend ! 
Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds 



That circle thy domain ! 
Let not a breath be seen to stir 
Around von grass-grown ruin's height, 
Let even the restless gossamer 
Sleep on the moveless air ! 
Soul of Ianthe ! thou, 
Judged alone worthy of the envied boon 
That waits the good and the sincere ; that waits 
Those who have struggled, and with resolute will 
Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the 
The icy chains of custom, and have shone [chains, 
The day-stars of their age ; — Soul of Ianthe ! 
Awake ! arise ! 

Sudden arose 
Ianthe's Soul ; it stood 
All beautiful in naked purity, 
The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. 
Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, 
Each stain of earthliness 
Had passed away, it reassumed 
Its native dignity, and stood 
Immortal amid ruin. 

Upon the couch the body lay, 
Wrapt in the depth of slumber : 
Its features were fixed and meaningless, 
Yet animal life was there, 
And every organ yet performed 
Its natural functions ; 'twas a sight 
Of wonder to behold the body and soul. 
The self-same lineaments, the same 
Marks of identity were there ; 
Yet, oh how different ! One aspires to heaven, 
Pants for its sempiternal heritage, 
And ever-changing, ever-rising still, 

Wantons in endless being. 
The other, for a time the unwilling sport 
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on ; 
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly ; 
Then like a useless and worn-out machine, 
Rots, perishes and passes. 



Spirit ! who hast dived so deep ; 
Spirit ! who hast soar'd so high ; 
Thou the fearless, thou the mild, 
Accept the boon thy worth hath earned, 
Ascend the car with me. 



Do I dream ? Is this new feeling 
But a visioned ghost of slumber ? 

If indeed I am a soul, 
A free, a disembodied soul, 
Speak again to me. 



I am the Fairy Mab : to me 'tis given 
The wonders of the human world to keep. 
The secrets of the immeasurable past, 
In the unfailing consciences of men, 
Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find : 
The future, from the causes which arise 
In each event, I gather : not the sting 
Which retributive memory implants 
In the hard bosom of the selfish man ; 
Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb 
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up 
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day, 



QUEEN MAB. 



Are unforeseen, unregistered by me : 
And it is yet permitted me, to rend 
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit, 
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know 
How soonest to accomplish the great end 
For which it hath its being, and may taste 
That peace, which in the end, all life will share. 
This is the meed of virtue ; happy Soul, 
Ascend the car with me ! 

The chains of earth's immurement 
Fell from Ianthe's spirit ; 
They shrank and brake like bandages of straw 
Beneath a wakened giant's strength. 
She knew her glorious change, 
And felt in apprehension uncontrolled 

New raptures opening round : 
Each day-dream of her mortal life, 
Each frenzied vision of the slumbers 
That closed each well-spent day, 
Seemed now to meet reality. 

The Fairy and the Soul proceeded ; 
The silver clouds disparted ; 
And as the car of magic they ascended, 
Again the speechless music swelled, 
Again the coursers of the air 
Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen, 
Shaking the beamy reins, 
Bade them pursue their way. 

The magic car moved on. 
The night was fair, and countless stars 
Studded heaven's dark blue vault, — 

Just o'er the eastern wave 
Peeped the first faint smile of morn : — 
The magic car moved on — 
From the celestial hoofs 
The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew, 

And where the burning wheels 
Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak, 
Was traced a line of lightning. 
Now it flew far above a rock, 
The utmost verge of earth, 
The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow 
Lowered o'er the silver sea. 

Far, far below the chariot's path, 
Calm as a slumbering babe, 
Tremendous Ocean lay. 

The mirror of its stillness showed 
The pale and waning stars, 
The chariot's fiery track, 
And the grey light of morn 
Tinging those fleecy clouds 
That canopied the dawn. 

Seemed it, that the chariot's way 

Lay through the midst of an immense concave, 

"Radiant with million constellations, tinged 

With shades of infinite colour, 

And semicircled with a belt 

Flashing incessant meteors. 

The magic car moved on. 
As they approached their goal, 
The coursers seemed to gather speed ; 
The sea no longer was distinguished ; earth 
Appear'd a vast and shadowy sphere ; 
The sun's unclouded orb 
Rolled through the black concave ; 



Its rays of rapid light 
Parted around the chariot's swifter course, 
And fell, like ocean's feathery spray 
Dashed from the boiling surge 
Before a vessel's prow. 

The magic car moved on. 
Earth's distant orb appeared 
The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven ; 
Whilst round the chariot's way 
Innumerable systems rolled, 
And countless spheres diffused 
An ever-varying glory. 
It was a sight of wonder : some 
Were horned like the crescent moon ; 
Some shed a mild and silver beam 
Like Hesperus o'er the western sea ; 
Some dashed athwart with trains of flame, 
Like worlds to death and ruin driven ; 
Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed, 
Eclipsed all other light. 

Spirit of Nature ! here ! 
In this interminable wilderness 
Of worlds, at whose immensity 
Even soaring fancy staggers, 
Here is thy fitting temple. 
Yet not the lightest leaf 
That quivers to the passing breeze 
Is less instinct with thee : 
Yet not the meanest worm 
That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead 
Less shares thy eternal breath. 

Spirit of Nature ! thou ! 
Imperishable as this scene, 
Here is thy fitting temple ! 



If solitude hath ever led thy steps 
To the wild ocean's echoing shore, 

And thou hast lingered there, 

Until the sun's broad orb 
Seemed resting on the burnished wave, 

Thou must have marked the lines 
Of purple gold, that motionless 

Hung o'er the sinking sphere : 
Thou must have marked the billowy clouds 
Edged with intolerable radiancy, 

Towering like rocks of jet 

Crowned with a diamond wreath. 

And yet there is a moment, 

When the sun's highest point 
Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge, 
When those far clouds of feathery gold, 
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam 
Like islands on a dark blue sea ; 
Then has thy fancy soared above the earth, 

And furled its wearied wing 

Within the Fairy's fane. 

Yet not the golden islands 
Gleaming in yon flood of light, 

Nor the feathery curtains 
Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch, 
Nor the burnished ocean-waves, 
Paving that gorgeous dome, 
So fair, so wonderful a sight 
As Mab's ethereal palace could afford. 



QUEEN MAB. 



Yet hkost evening's vault, that fairy Hall! 

kren, low resting on the wave, it spread 

Its Boon of Hashing Light, 

[fa vaal ami axure dome, 
fertile golden islands 

Floating on a silver aea : 
Whilst sutis their mipgHiig beaming! darted 
Through clouds of oironmamhient darkness, 

Ami pearly battlements around 
Looked o'er the immense of Heaven. 

The magic ear no longer moved. 
The Fairv and the Spirit 
Entered the Hall of Spells : 
Those golden clouds 
That rolled in glittering billows 
Beneath the azure canopy, 
With the ethereal footsteps trembled not : 

The light and crimson mists. 
Floating to strains of thrilling melody 
Through that unearthly dwelling, 
Yielded To every movement of the will. 
Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned, 
And, for the varied bliss that pressed around, 
1 not the glorious privilege 
Of virtue and of wisdom. 

Spirit ! the Fairy said, 
And pointed to the gorgeous dome, 

This is a wondrous sight 
And mocks all human grandeur ; 
But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell 
In a celestial palace, all resigned 
To pleasurable impulses, immured 
Within the prison of itself, the will 
Of changeless nature would be unfulfilled. 
Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come ! 
This is thine high reward : — the past shall rise ; 
Thou shalt behold the present ; I will teach 

The secrets of the future. 

The Fairy and the Spirit 

Approached the overhanging battlement — 

Below lay stretched the universe ! 

There, far as the remotest line 

That bounds imagination's flight, 

Countless and unending orbs 
In mazy motion intermingled, 
Yet still fulfilled immutably 
Eternal Nature's l~»v. 
Above, below, around 
The circling systems formed 
A wilderness of harmony ; 
Each with undeviating aim, 
In eloquent silence, through the depths of space 
Pursued its wondrous way. 

There was a little light 
That twinkled in the misty distance : 

None but a spirit's eye 

Might ken that rolling orb ; 

None but a spirit's eye, 

And in no other place 
But that celestial dwelling, might behold 
Each action of this earth's inhabitants. 

But matter, space and time, 
In those aerial mansions cease to act ; 
And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps 
The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds 
Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul 
Fears to attempt the conquest. 



The Fairy pointed to the earth. 
The Spirit's intellectual eye 
Its kindred beings recognized. 
The thronging thousands, to a passing view, 
Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens. 
How wonderful ! that even 
The passions, prejudices, interests, 
That sway the meanest being, the weak touch 
That moves the finest nerve, 
And in one human brain 
Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link 
In the great chain of nature. 

Behold, the Fairy cried, 
Palmyra's ruin'd palaces !— 

Behold ! where grandeur frowned ; 

Behold ! where pleasure smiled ; 
What now remains ? — the memory 

Of senselessness and shame — 

What is immortal there ? 

Nothing — it stands to tell 

A melancholy tale, to give 

An awful warning : soon 
Oblivion will steal silently 

The remnant of its fame. 

Monarchs and conquerors there 
Proud o'er prostrate millions trod — 
The earthquakes of the human race, — 
Like them, forgotten when the ruin 

That marks their shock is past. 

Beside the eternal Nile 

The Pyramids have risen. 
Nile shall pursue his changeless way ; 

Those Pyramids shall fall ; 
Yea ! not a stone shall stand to tell 

The spot whereon they stood ; 
Their very site shall be forgotten, 

As is their builder's name ! 

Behold yon sterile spot ; 
Where now the wandering Arab's tent 

Flaps in the desert-blast. 
There once old Salem's haughty fane 
Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, 
And in the blushing face of day 
Exposed its shameful glory. 
Oh ! many a widow, many an orphan cursed 
The building of that fane ; and many a father, 
Worn out with toil and slavery, implored 
The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, 
And spare his children the detested task . 
Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning 

The choicest days of life, 

To soothe a dotard's vanity. 
There an inhuman and uncultured race 
Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God ; 
They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb 
The unborn child, — old age and infancy 
Promiscuous perished ; their victorious arms 
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh ! they were 

fiends : 
But what was he who taught them that the God 
Of nature and benevolence had given 
A special sanction to the trade of blood I 
His name and theirs are fading, and the tales 
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture 
Recites till terror credits, are pursuing 
Itself into forgetfulness. 



QUEEN MAB. 



Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, 
There is a moral desert now : 
The mean and miserable huts, 
The yet more wretched palaces, 
Contrasted with those ancient fanes, 
Now crumbling to oblivion ; 
The long and lonely colonnades, 
Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks, 
Seem like a well-known tune, 
Which, in some dear scene we have loved to hear. 
Remembered now in sadness. 
But, oh ! how much more changed, 
How gloomier is the contrast 
Of human nature there ! 
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, 
A coward and a fool, spreads death around — 

Then, shuddering, meets his own. 
Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, 
A cowled and hypocritical monk 
Prays, curses, and deceives. 

Spirit ! ten thousand years 
Have scarcely passed away, 
Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks 
His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons, 
Wakes the unholy song of war, 
Arose a stately city, 
Metropolis of the western continent : 

There, now, the mossy column-stone, 
Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp, 
Which once appeared to brave 
All, save its country's ruin ; 
There the wide forest scene, 
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness 

Of gardens long run wild, 
Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps 

Chance in that desert has delayed, 
Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. 

Yet once it was the busiest haunt, 
Whither, as to a common centre, flocked 
Strangers, and ships, and merchandize : 
Once peace and freedom blest 
The cultivated plain : 
But wealth, that curse of man, 
Blighted the bud of its prosperity : 
Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, 
Fled, to return not, until man shall know 
That they alone can give the bliss 

Worthy a soul that claims 
Its kindred with eternity. 

There's not one atom of yon earth 

But once was living man ; 
Nor the minutest drop of rain, 
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, 

But flowed in human veins : 

And from the burning plains 

Where Lybian monsters yell, 

From the most gloomy glens 

Of Greenland's sunless clime, 

To where the golden fields 

Of fertile England spread 

Their harvest to the day, 

ThoU canst not find one spot 

Whereon no city stood. 

How strange is human pride ! 
I tell thee that those living things, 
To whom the fragile blade of grass, 

That springeth in the morn 



And perisheth ere noon, 
Is an unbounded world ; 
I tell thee that those viewless beings, 
Whose mansion is the smallest particle 
Of the impassive atmosphere, 
Think, feel and live like man ; 
That their affections and antipathies, 
Like his, produce the laws 
Ruling their moral state ; 
And the minutest throb 
That through their frame diffuses 
The slightest, faintest motion, 
Is fixed and indispensable 
As the majestic laws 
That rule yon rolling orbs. 

The Fairy paused. The Spirit, 
In ecstacy of admiration, felt 
All knowledge of the past revived ; the events 

Of old and wondrous times, 
Which dim tradition interruptedly 
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded 
In just perspective to the view ; 
Yet dim from their infinitude. 
The Spirit seemed to stand 
High on an isolated pinnacle ; 
The flood of ages combating below, 
The depth of the unbounded universe 
Above, and all around 
Nature's unchanging harmony. 



Fairy ! the Spirit said, 

And on the Queen of Spells 

Fixed her ethereal eyes, 
I thank thee. Thou hast given 
A boon which I will not resign, and taught 
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know 
The past, and thence I will essay to glean 
A warning for the future, so that man 
May profit by his errors, and derive 

Experience from his folly : 
For, when the power of imparting joy 
Is equal to the will, the human soul 

Requires no other heaven. 



Turn thee, surpassing Spirit ! 
Much yet remains unscanned. 
Thou knowest how great is man, 
Thou knowest his imbecility : 
Yet learn thou what he is ; 
Yet learn the lofty destiny 
Which restless Time prepares 
For every living soul. 

Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid 

Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers 

And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops 

Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks, 

Encompass it around : the dweller there 

Cannot be free and happy ; hearest thou not 

The curses of the fatherless, the groans 

Of those who have no friend % He passes on : 

The King, the wearer of a gilded chain 

That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool 

Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave 

Even to the basest appetites -that man 



QUEEN MAH. 



i penun ; he smiles 
- which the destitute 

Mul a sullen joy 

bloodless heart when thousands groan 
v bich Ins wanton] 
Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save 
All that they lore from famine: when be hears 
de of horror, to some ready-made Face 
\ pocritical assent he turns, 
hering the -low of shame, that, spite of him, 
• bloated cheek. 

Now to the meal 
Of silence, grandeur, ami excess, he drags 
His palled unwilling appetite. If gold, 

Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled 

From every dime, could force the loathing sense 

\ Broome satiety, — if wealth 
The spring it draws from poisons not, — or vice, 
Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not 

1 to deadliest venom; then that king 
Is happy ; and the peasant who fulfils 
His unforced task, when he returns at even, 
And by the biasing faggot meets again 
Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, 
- not a sweeter meal. 

Behold him now 
tched on the gorgeous couch ; his fevered brain 
dizzily awhile : but ah! too soon 
The slumber of intemperance subsides, 
And conscience, that undying serpent, calls 
Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. 
Listen ! bespeaks! oh ! mark that frenzied eye — 
Oh ! mark that deadly visage. 

KING. 

No cessation ! 
Oh ! must this last for ever! Awful death, 
I wish yet fear to clasp thee ! Not one moment 
Of dreamless sleep ! dear and blessed peace ! 
Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity 
In penury and dungeons! wherefore lurkest 
With danger, death, and solitude: yet shunn'st 
The palace I have built thee ! Sacred peace ! 
Oh visit me but once, and pitying shed 
One drop of balm upon my withered soul. 

Vain man ! that palace is the virtuous heart, 

And peace defileth not her snowy robes 

In such a shed as thine. Hark ! yet he mutters ; 

His slumbers are but varied agonies, 

They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. 

There needeth not the hell that bigots frame 

To punish those who err: earth in itself 

Contains at once the evil and the cure ; 

And all-sufficing nature can chastise 

Those who transgress her law, — she only knows 

How justly to proportion to the fault 

The punishment it merits. 

Is it strange 
That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe? 
Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug 
The scorpion that consumes him ? Is it strange 
That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, 
Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured 
Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds 
Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, 
His soul asserts not its humanity? 
That man's mild nature rises not in war 



Against a king's employ? No — 'tis not strange, 
He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives 
dust as his father did; the unconquered powers 
Of precedent and custom interpose 
Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet, 
To those who know not nature, nor deduce 
The future from the present, it may seem, • 
That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes 
Of this unnatural being; not one wretch, 
Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed 
Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm 
To dash him from his throne ! 

Those gilded flies 
That basking in the sunshine of a court, 
Fatten on its corruption ! — what are they ? 
— The drones of the community ; they feed 
On the mechanic's labour; the starved hind 
For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield 
Its unshared harvests ; and yon squalid form, 
Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes 
A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, 
Drags out in labour a protracted death, 
To glut their grandeur ; many faint with toil, 
That few may know the cares and woe of sloth. 

Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose? 
Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap 
Toil and unvanquishable penury 
On those who build their palaces, and bring [vice; 
Their daily bread ? — From vice, black loathsome 
From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong ; 
From all that genders misery, and makes 
Of earth this thorny wilderness ; from lust, 
Revenge, and murder — And when reason's voice, 
Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked 
The nations ; and mankind perceive that vice 
Is discord, war, and misery ; that virtue 
Is peace, and happiness and harmony ; 
When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
The playthings of its childhood ; — kingly glare 
Will lose its power to dazzle ; its authority 
Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous throne 
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, 
Fast falling to decay ; whilst falsehood's trade 
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
As that of truth is now. 

Where is the fame 
Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth 
Seek to eternize ? Oh ! the faintest sound 
From time's light foot-fall, the minutest wave 
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing 
The unsubstantial bubble. Aye ! to-day 
Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze 
That flashes desolation, strong the arm 
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes ! 
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died 
In ages past ; that gaze, a transient flash 
On which the midnight closed, and on that arm 
The worm has made his meal. 

The virtuous man 
Who, great in his humility, as kings 
Are little in their grandeur ; he who leads 
Invincibly a life of resolute good, 
And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths 
More free and fearless than the trembling judge, 
Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove . 
To bind the impassive spirit ; — when he falls, 
His mild eye beams benevolence no more : 






QUEEN MA 13. 



Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve ; 
Sunk reason's simple eloquence, that rolled 
But to appal the guilty. Yes ! the grave [frost 
Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless 
Withered that arm : but the unfading fame 
Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb ; 
The deathless memory of that man, whom kings 
Call to their mind and tremble ; the remembrance 
With which the happy spirit contemplates 
Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, 
Shall never pass away. 

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man ; 
The subject, not the citizen : for kings 
And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play 
A losing game into each other's hands, 
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man 
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. 
Power, like a desolating pestilence, 
Pollutes whate'er it touches ; and obedience, 
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, 
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame 
A mechanized automaton. 

When Nero, 
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy 
Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear 
The shrieks of agonising death, beheld 
The frightful desolation spread, and felt 
A new-created sense within his soul 
Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound; 
Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome 
The force of human kindness ? and, when Rome, 
With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down, 
Crushed not the arm, red with her dearest blood, 
Had not submissive abjectness destroyed 
Nature's suggestions? 

Look on yonder earth : 
The golden harvests spring ; the unfailing sun 
Sheds fight and life ; the fruits, the flowers, the 
Arise in due succession ; all things speak [trees, 
Peace, harmony, and love. The universe, 
In nature's silent eloquence, declares 
That all fulfil the works of love and joy, — 
All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates 
The sword which stabs his peace ; he cherisheth 
The snakes that gnaw his heart ; he raiseth up 
The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, 
Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, 
Lights it the great alone ? Yon silver beams, 
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch, 
Than on the dome of kings ? Is mother earth 
A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn 
Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil ; 
A mother only to those puling babes 
Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men 
The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, 
In self-important childishness, that peace 
Which men alone appreciate ? 

Spirit of Nature ! no ! 
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs 
Alike in every human heart. 

Thou, aye, erectest there 
Thy throne of power unappealable : 
Thou art the judge beneath whose nod 
Man's brief and frail authority 

Is powerless as the wind 

That passeth idly by. 



Thine the tribunal which surpasseth 
The show of human justice, 
As God surpasses man. 

Spirit of Nature ! thou 
Life of" interminable multitudes ; 

Soul of those mighty spheres 
Whose changeless paths through Heaven's deep 
Soul of that smallest being, [silence lie ; 

The dwelling of whose life 
Is one faint April sun-gleam ; — 
Man, like these passive things, 
Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : 
Like theirs, his age of endless peace, 
Which time is fast maturing, 
Will swiftly, surely, come ; 
And the unbounded frame, which thou pervades! 
Will be without a flaw 
Marring its perfect symmetry. 



IV. 

How beautiful this night ! the balmiest sigh, 
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, 
Were discord to the speaking quietude 
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon 
Studded with stars unutterably bright, [vault, 
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur 
Seems like a canopy which love has spread [rolls, 
To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, 
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow ; 
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, 
So stainless that their white and glittering spires 
Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep, 
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower 
So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it 
A metaphor of peace ; — all form a scene 
Where musing solitude might love to lift 
Her soul above this sphere of earthfiness ; 
Where silence undisturbed might watch alone, 
So cold, so bright, so still. 

The orb of day, 
In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field 
Sinks sweetly smiling : not the faintest breath 
Steals o'er the unruffled deep ; the clouds of eve 
Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day ; 
And vesper's image on the western main 
Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes : 
Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, 
Roll o'er the blackened waters ; the deep roar 
Of distant thunder mutters awfully ; 
Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom 
That shrouds the boiling surge ; the pitiless fiend, 
With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey ; 
The torn deep yawns, — the vessel finds a grave 
Beneath its jagged gulf. 

Ah ! whence yon glare 
That fires the arch of heaven! — that dark red smoke 
Blotting the silver moon \ The stars are quenched 
In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow 
Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round. 
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals 
In countless echoes through the mountains ring, 
Startling pale midnight on her starry throne ! 
Now swells the intermingling din ; the jar 
Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb ; 
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, 
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men 



QUEEN MAT.. 



Iix'lu kge: — loud, and DOOM loud 

The di-v till pale tliath shuts the scene, 

Ami o'er the conqueror ami the ooaouer'd draws 

Id and bloody shroud. — Of all the men 
Wln>in day's departing beam saw blooming there 
In proud and rigorous health ; of all the bearta 
That boat with anxious life at sun-sot there ; 
How tern survive, how tow aro hoatinff now ! 
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm 
That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause ; 

when the frantic wail of widowed kwre 
Gomes shuddering on the Mast, or the taint moan 
With which some soul hursts from the frame of day 

Wrapt round its straggling powam 

The grey morn 
Dawns on the mournful scene : the sulphurous 
Before the icy wind slow rolls away, [smoke 

And the bright beams of frosty morning dance 

Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood 
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, 
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments 
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful 
Of the outsallying victors : far behind, [path 

Black ashes note where their proud city stood. 
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen — 
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, 
o'er a warrior's tomb. 

I see thee shrink, 
Surpassing Spirit! — wert thou human else? 
I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet 
Across thy stainless features : yet fear not ; 
This is no unconnected misery, 
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. 
Man's evil nature, that apology 
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, 

set up 
For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood 
Which desolates the discord-wasted land 
From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, 
Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, 
Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe 
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall ; 
And where its venomed exhalations spread 
Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay 
Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones 
Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, 
A garden shall arise, in loveliness 
Surpassing fabled Eden. 

Hath Nature's soul, 
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread 
Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord 
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave 
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, 
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep 
The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, 
And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust 
With spirit, thought, and love ; on Man alone 
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly 
Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery ; his soul 
Blasted with withering curses ; placed afar 
The meteor happiness, that shuns his grasp, 
But serving on the frightful gulf to glare, 
Rent wide beneath his footsteps ? 

Nature ! — no ! 
K ings, pries ts,and statesmen blast the human flower, 
Even in its tender bud ; their influence darts 
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins 
Of desolate society. The child, 



Ere he can lisp his mother's saered name, 
Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts 
His baby-eword even in B hero's mood. 
This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge 
Of devastated earth ; whilst specious names 
Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, 
Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims 
Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword 
Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. 
Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man 
Inherits vice and misery, when force 
And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, 
Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. 

Ah ! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps 
From its new tenement, and looks abroad 
For happiness and sympathy, how stern 
And desolate a tract is this wide world ! 
How withered all the buds of natural good ! 
No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms 
Of pitiless power ! On its wretched frame, 
Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe 
Heaped on the wretched parent, whence it sprung, 
By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds 
Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, 
May breathe not. The untainting light of day 
May visit not its longings. It is bound 
Ere it has life : yea, all the chains are forged 
Long ere its being : all liberty and love 
And peace is torn from its defencelessness ; 
Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed 
To abjectness and bondage ! 

Throughout this varied and eternal world 

Soul is the only element, the block 

That for uncounted ages has remained. 

The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight 

Is active living spirit. Every grain 

Is sentient both in unity and part, 

And the minutest atom comprehends 

A world of loves and hatreds ; these beget 

Evil and good : hence truth and falsehood spring ; 

Hence will, and thought, and action, all the germs 

Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate, 

That variegate the eternal universe. 

Soul is not more polluted than the beams 

Of heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines 

The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise. 

Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds 

Of high resolve ; on fancy's boldest wing 

To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn 

The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste 

The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. 

Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, 

To grovel on the dunghill of his fears, 

To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame 

Of natural love in sensualism, to know 

That hour as blest when on his worthless days 

The frozen hand of death shall set its seal, 

Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. 

The one is man that shall hereafter be ; 

The other, man as vice has made him now. 

War is the sta-tesman's game, the priest's delight, 
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade, 
And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones 
Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore, 
The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean. 
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround 



QUEEN MAB. 



Their palaces, participate the crimes 
That force defends, and from a nation's rage 
Secure the crown, which all the curses reiu-h 
That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe. 
These are the hired bravoes who defend 
The tyrant's throne — the bullies of his fear : 
These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, 
The refuge of society, the dregs 
Of all that is most vile : their cold hearts blend 
Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, 
All that is mean and villanous, with rage 
Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, 
Alone might kindle ; they are decked in wealth, 
Honour and power, then are sent abroad 
To do their work. The pestilence that stalks 
In gloomy triumph through some Eastern land 
Is less destroying. They cajole with gold, 
And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth 
Already crushed with servitude : he knows 
His wretchedness too late, and cherishes 
Repentance for his ruin, when his doom 
Is sealed in gold and blood ! 
Those too the tyrant serve, who skilled to snare 
The feet of justice in the toils of law, 
Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still ; 
And, right or wrong, will vindicate for gold, 
Sneering at public virtue, which beneath 
Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, where 
Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth. 

Then grave and hoary -headed hypocrites, 
Without a hope, a passion, or a love, 
Who, through a life of luxury and lies, 
Have crept by flattery to the seats of power, 
Support the system whence their honours flow — 
They have three words ; well tyrants know their use, 
Well pay them for the loan, with usury [Heaven. 
Torn from a bleeding world! — God, Hell and 
A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend, 
Whose mercy is a nick-name for the rage 
Of tameless tigers hungering for blood. 
Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire, 
Where poisonous and undying worms prolong 
Eternal misery to those hapless slaves 
Whose fife has been a penance for its crimes. 
And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie 
Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe 
Before the mockeries of earthly power. 

These tools the tyrant tempers to his work, 
Wields in his wrath, and as he wills, destroys, 
Omnipotent in wickedness : the while 
Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does 
His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend 
Force to the weakness of his trembling arm. 

They rise, they fall ; one generation comes 
Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe. 
It fades, another blossoms : yet behold ! 
Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom, 
Withering and cankering deep its passive prime. 
He has invented lying words and modes, 
Empty and vain as his own coreless heart ; 
Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound, 
To lure the heedless victim to the toils 
Spread round the valley of its paradise. 

Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince ! 
Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts 
Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor, 



With whom thy master was : — or thou delight'st 
In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain, 
All misery weighing nothing in the scale 
Against thy short-lived fame : or thou dost load 
With cowardice and crime the groaning land, 
A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self ! 
Aye, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er 
Crawled on the loathing earth ? Are not thy days 
Days of unsatisfying listlessness ? 
Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er, 
When will the morning come ? Is not thy youth 
A vain and feverish dream of sensualism ? 
Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease ? 
Are not thy views of unregretted death 
Drear, comfortless, and horrible ? Thy mind, 
Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, 
Incapable of judgment, hope, or love ? 
And dost thou wish the errors to survive 
That bar thee from all sympathies of good, 
Alter the miserable interest 
Thou hold'st in their protraction ? When the grave 
Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself, 
Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth 
To twine its roots around thy coffined clay, 
Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb, 
That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die 1 



Thus do the generations of the earth 
Go to the grave, and issue from the womb, 
Surviving still the imperishable change 
That renovates the world ; even as the leaves 
Which the keen frost- wind of the waning year 
Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped 
For many seasons there, though long they choke, 
Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, 
All germs of promise. Yet when the tall trees 
From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, 
Lie level with the earth to moulder there, 
They fertilize the land they long deformed, 
Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs 
Of youth, integrity, and loveliness, 
Like that which gave it life, to spring and die- 
Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights 
The fairest feelings of the opening heart, 
Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil 
Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, 
And judgment cease to wage unnatural war 
With passion's unsubduable array. 
Twin-sister of religion, selfishness ! 
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all 
The wanton horrors of her bloody play ; 
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, 
Shunning the light, and owning not its name : 
Compelled, by its deformity, to screen 
With flimsy veil of justice and of right, 
Its unattractive lineaments, that scare 
All, save the brood of ignorance : at once 
The cause and the effect of tyranny ; 
Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile ; 
Dead to all love but of its abjectness, 
With heart impassive by more noble powers 
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame ; 
Despising its own miserable being, 
Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall. 

Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange 
Of all that human art or nature yield ; 



10 



QUEEN MAIi. 



Which wealth should purchase not, but «ant 

Ami natural kindness hasten to supply [demand, 

From the full fountain of its boundless love, 

For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now. 

Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade 

No solitary virtue dares to Bpring ; 

Hut poverty ami wealth with equal hand 

Scatter their withering curses, ami unfold 

The doors of premature ami violent death, 

To pining famine and full-fed disease, 

To all that shares the lot of human life, [chain 

Which poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the 

That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind. 

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, 

The signet of its all-enslaving power, 

Upon a shining ore, and called it gold : 

Before whose image bow the vulgar great, 

The vainly rich, the miserable proud, 

The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, 

And with blind feelings reverence the power 

That grinds them to the dust of misery. 

But in the temple of their hireling hearts 

Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn 

All earthly things but virtue. 

Since tyrants, by the sale of human life, 
Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame 
To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, 
Success has sanctioned to a credulous world 
The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. 
His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes 
The despot numbers ; from his cabinet 
These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, 
Even as the slaves by force or famine driven 
Beneath a vulgar master, to perform 
A task of cold and brutal drudgery ; — 
Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, 
Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine, 
Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, 
That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth ! 

The harmony and happiness of man 

Yield to the wealth of nations ; that which lifts 

His nature to the heaven of its pride, 

Is bartered for the poison of his soul ; 

The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes, 

Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, 

Withering all passion but of slavish fear, 

Extinguishing all free and generous love 

Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse 

That fancy kindles in the beating heart 

To mingle with sensation, it destroys, — 

Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, 

The grovelling hope of interest and gold, 

Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed 

Even by hypocrisy. 

And statesmen boast 
Of wealth ! The wordy eloquence that lives 
After the ruin of their hearts, can gild 
The bitter poison of a nation's woe, 
Can turn the worship of the servile mob 
To their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame, 
From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread, 
Although its dazzling pedestal be raised 
Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, 
With desolated dwellings smoking round. 
The man of ease, who, by his warm fire-side, 
To deeds of charitable intercourse 



And bare fulfilment of the common laws 

Of decency and prejudice, confines 

The struggling nature of his human heart, 

Is duped by their cold sophistry ; he sheds 

A passing tear perchance upon the wreck 

Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door 

The frightful waves are driven, — when' his son 

Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion 

Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man, 

Whose life is misery, and fear, and care ; 

Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil ; 

Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream, 

Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze 

For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye 

Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene 

Of thousands like himself ; he little heeds 

The rhetoric of tyranny, his hate 

Is quenchless as his wrongs, he laughs to scorn 

The vain and bitter mockery of words, 

Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, 

And unrestrained but by the arm of power, 

That knows and dreads his enmity. 

The iron rod of penury still compels 

Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, 

And poison, with unprofitable toil, 

A life too void of solace to confirm 

The very chains that bind him to his doom. 

Nature, impartial in munificence, 

Has gifted man with all-subduing will : 

Matter, with all its transitory shapes, 

Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, 

That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread. 

How many a rustic Milton has passed by, 

Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, 

In unremitting drudgery and care ! 

How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 

His energies, no longer tameless then, 

To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail ! 

How many a Newton, to whose passive ken 

Those mighty spheres that gem infinity 

Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven 

To light the midnights of his native town ! 

Yet every heart contains perfection's germ : 
The wisest of the sages of the earth, 
That ever from the stores of reason drew 
Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, 
Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, 
Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued 
With pure desire and universal love, 
Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, 
Untainted passion, elevated will, 
Which death (who even would linger long in awe 
Within his noble presence, and beneath 
His changeless eye-beam), might alone subdue. 
Him, every slave now dragging through the filth 
Of some corrupted city his sad life, 
Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, 
Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense 
With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, 
Or madly rushing through all violent crime, 
To move the deep stagnation of his soul, — 
Might imitate and equal. 

But mean lust 
Has bound its chains so tight about the earth, 
That all within it but the virtuous man 
Is venal : gold or fame will surely reach 
The price prefixed by selfishness, to all 



QUEEN MAB. 



II 



But him of resolute and unchanging will ; 

Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, 

Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, 

Can bribe to yield his elevated soul 

To tyranny or falsehood, though they wield 

With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. 

All things are sold : the very light of heaven 

Is venal ; earth's unsparing gifts of love, 

The smallest and most despicable things 

That lurk in the abysses of the deep, 

All objects of our life, even life itself, 

And the poor pittance which the laws allow 

Of liberty, the fellowship of man, 

Those duties which his heart of human love 

Should urge him to perform instinctively, 

Are bought and sold as in a public mart 

Of undisguising selfishness, that sets 

On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign. 

Even love is sold ; the solace of all woe 

Is turned to deadliest agony, old age 

Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, 

And youth's corrupted impulses prepare 

A life of horror from the blighting bane 

Of commerce : whilst the pestilence that springs 

From unenjoying sensualism, has filled 

All human life with hydra-headed woes. 

Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs 

Of outraged conscience ; for the slavish priest 

Sets no great value on his hireling faith : 

A little passing pomp, some servile souls, 

Whom cowardice itself might safely chain, 

Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe 

To deck the triumph of their languid zeal, 

Can make him minister to tyranny. 

More daring crime requires a loftier meed : 

Without a shudder the slave-soldier lends 

His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart, 

When the dread eloquence of dying men, 

Low mingling on the lonely field of fame, 

Assails that nature whose applause he sells 

For the gross blessings of the patriot mob, 

For the vile gratitude of heartless kings, 

And for a cold world's good word, — viler still ! 

There is a nobler glory which survives 

Until our being fades, and, solacing 

All human care, accompanies its change ; 

Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom, 

And, in the precincts of the palace, guides 

Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ; 

Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, 

Even when, from power's avenging hand, he takes 

Its sweetest, last and noblest title — death ; 

— The consciousness of good, which neither gold, 

Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, 

Can purchase ; but a life of resolute good, 

Unalterable will, quenchless desire 

Of universal happiness, the heart 

That beats with it in unison, the brain, 

Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change 

Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. 

This commerce of sincerest virtue needs 
No mediative signs of selfishness, 
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, 
No balancings of prudence, cold and long ; 
In just and equal measure all is weighed, 
One scale contains the sum of human weal, 
And one, the good man's heart. 



How vainly seek 
The selfish.for that happiness denied 
To aught but virtue ! Blind and hardened, they 
Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, 
Who covet power they know not how to use, 
And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give : — 
Madly they frustrate still their own designs ; 
And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy 
Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, 
Pining regrets, and vain repentances, 
Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade 
Their valueless and miserable lives. 

But hoary -headed selfishness has felt 

Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave : 

A brighter morn awaits the human day, 

When every transfer of earth's natural gifts 

Shall be a commerce of good words and woi'ks ; 

When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame, 

The fear of infamy, disease and woe, 

War with its million horrors, and fierce hell, 

Shall live but in the memory of time, 

Who, like a penitent libertine shall start, 

Look back, and shudder at his younger years. 



VI. 

All touch, all eye, all ear, 
The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. 

O'er the thin texture of its frame, 
The varying periods painted, changing glows ; 

As on a summer even, 
When soul-enfolding music floats around, 
The stainless mirror of the lake 
Re-images the eastern gloom, 
Mingling convulsively its purple hues 
With sunset's burnished gold. 

Then thus the Spirit spoke : 
It is a wild and miserable world ! 
Thorny, and full of care, 
Which e^ery fiend can make his prey at will. 
O Fairy ! in the lapse of years, 
Is there no hope in store % 
Will yon vast suns roll on 
Interminably, still illuming 
The night of so many wretched souls, 
And see no hope for them ? 
Will not the universal Spirit e'er 
Revivify this withered limb of Heaven ? 

The Fairy calmly smiled 
In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope 

Suffused the Spirit's lineaments. 
Oh ! rest thee tranquil ; chase those fearful doubts. 
Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul, 
That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. 
Yes ! crime and misery are in yonder earth, 

Falsehood, mistake, and lust ; 

But the eternal world 
Contains at once the evil and the cure. 
Some eminent in virtue shall start up, 

Even in perversest time : 
The truths of their pure lips, that never die, 
Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath 

Of ever-living flame, 
Until the monster sting itself to death. 

How sweet a scene will earth become ! 
Of purest spirits, a pure dwelling-place, 



12 



QUEEN MAB. 



Sjm phonJOOa with the planetary spheres ; 
When man, with changeless nature coalescing, 
"VN "ill undertake regeneration's work, 
When its ungenial poles no longer point 

To the red and baleful sun 

That faintly twinkles there. 

Spirit, on yonder earth, 
Falsehood DOW triumphs ; deadly power 
Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth ! 

Madness and misery are there ! 
The happiest is most wretched ! Yet confide 
Until pure health-drops, from the cup of joy 
Fall like a dew of balm upon the world. 
Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn, 
And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, 
Which nature soon, with re-creating hand, 
Will blot in mercy from the book of earth. 
How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing, 
How swift the step of reason's firmer tread, 
How calm and sweet the victories of life, 
How t errorless the triumph of the grave ! 
How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm, 
Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown ! 
How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar ! 
The weight of his exterminating curse 
How light ! and his affected charity, 
To suit the pressure of the changing times, 
What palpable deceit ! — but for thy aid, 
Religion ! but for thee, prolific fiend, 
Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, 
And heaven with slaves ! 

Thou taintest all thou look'st upon ! — the stars, 
Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, 
Were gods to the distempered playfulness 
Of thy untutored infancy : the trees, 
The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea, 
All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly, 
Were gods : the sun had homage, and the moon 
Her worshipper. Then thou becamest a boy, 
More daring in thy frenzies : every shape, 
Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild, 
Which from sensation's relics, fancy culls ; 
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, 
The genii of the elements, the powers 
That give a shape to nature's varied works, 
Had life and place in the corrupt belief 
Of thy blind heart : yet still thy youthful hands 
Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave 
Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain ; 
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, 
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride: 
Their everlasting and unchanging laws 
Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst 
Baffled and gloomy ; then thou didst sum up 
The elements of all that thou didst know ; 
The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, 
The budding of the heaven-breathing trees, 
The eternal orbs that beautify the night, 
The sun-rise, and the setting of the moon, 
Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, 
And all their causes, to an abstract point 
Converging, thou didst bend, and call'd it God ! 
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent, 
The merciful, and the avenging God ! 
Who, prototype of human misrule, sits 
High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, 
Even like an earthly king ; and whose dread work, 
Hell, gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves 



Of fate, whom he created in his sport, 

To triumph in their torments when they fell ! 

Earth heard the name ; earth trembled, as the smoke 

Of his revenge ascended up to heaven, 

Blotting the constellations ; and the cries 

Of millions butcher'd in sweet confidence 

And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds 

Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths 

Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land ; 

Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn 

spear, 
And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek 
Of maniacv gladness as the sacred steel 
Felt cold in her torn entrails ! 

Religion ! thou wert then in manhood's prime : 

But age crept on : one God would not suffice 

For senile puerility ; thou framedst 

A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut 

Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend 

Thy wickedness had pictured, might afford 

A plea for sating the unnatural thirst 

For murder, rapine, violence, and crime, 

That still consumed thy i»eing, even when [fight 

Thou heardst the step of fate ;— that flames might 

Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks 

Of parents dying on the pile that burn'd 

To light their children to thy paths, the roar 

Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries 

Of thine apostles, loud commingling there, 

Might sate thy hungry ear 

Even on the bed of death ! 

But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs ; 
Thou art descending to the darksome grave, 
Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those 
Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds, 
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun 
Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night 
That long has lowered above the ruined world. 

Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 

Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused 

A spirit of activity and life, 

That knows no term, cessation, or decay ; 

That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, 

Extinguished in the dampness of the grave, 

Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe 

In the dim newness of its being feels 

The impulses of sublunary tilings, 

And all is wonder to unpractised sense : 

But, active, stedfast, and eternal, still 

Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars, 

Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves, 

Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease ; 

And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly 

Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes 

Its undecaying battlement, presides, 

Apportioning with irresistible law 

The place each spring of its machine shall fill ; 

So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap 

Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven 

Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean 

Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner, [fords 

Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock, 

All seems unlinked contingency and chance : 

No atom of this turbulence fulfils 

A vague and unnecessitated task, 

Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 

Even the minutest molecule of light, 



QUEEN MAB. 



13 



That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow 
Fulfils its destined, though invisible work, 
The universal Spirit guides ; nor less 
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, 
Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field, 
That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves 
And call the sad work glory, does it rule 
All passions : not a thought, a will, an act, 
No working of the tyrant's moody mind, 
Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast 
Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel, 
Nor the events enchaining every will, 
That from the depths of unrecorded time 
Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass 
Unrecognised or unforeseen by thee, 
Soul of the Universe ! eternal spring 
Of life and death, of happiness and woe, 
Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene 
That floats before our eyes in wavering light. 
Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison, 

Whose chains and massy walls 

We feel but cannot see. 

Spirit of Nature ! all-sufficing Power. 
Necessity ! thou mother of the world ! 
Unlike the God of human error, thou 
Requirest no prayers or praises ; the caprice 
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee 
Than do th6 changeful passions of his breast 
To thy unvarying harmony : the slave, 
Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world, 
And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride, 
His being, in the sight of happiness, 
That springs from his own works ; the poison-tree, 
Beneath whose shade all life is withered up, 
And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords 
A temple where the vows of happy love 
Are register'd, are equal in thy sight : 
No love, no hate thou cherishest ; revenge 
And favouritism, and worst desire of fame, 
Thou knowest not : all that the wide world contains 
Are but thy passive instruments, and thou 
Regard'st them all with an impartial eye 
Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel, 

Because thou hast not human sense, 

Because thou art not human mind. 

Yes ! when the sweeping storm of time 
Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes 
And broken altars of the almighty fiend 
Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood 
Through centuries clotted there, has floated down 
The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live 
Unchangeable ! A shrine is raised to thee, 

Which, nor the tempest breath of time, 

Nor the interminable flood, 

Over earth's slight pageant rolling, 
Availeth to destroy, — 
The sensitive extension of the world. 

That wondrous and eternal fane, 
Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join, 
To do the will of strong necessity, 

And fife in multitudinous shapes, 
Still pressing forward where no term can be, 

Like hungry and unresting flame 
Curls round the eternal columns of its strength. 



VII. 

SPIRIT. 

I was an infant when my mother went 

To see an atheist burned. She took me there : 

The dark-robed priests were met around the pile ; 

The multitude was gazing silently ; 

And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, 

Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, 

Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth : 

The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs ; 

His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon ; 

His death-pang rent my heart ! the insensate mob 

Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. 

Weep not, child ! cried my mother, for that man 

Has said, There is no God. 

FAIRY. 

There is no God ! 
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan seal'd : 
Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, 
His ceaseless generations, tell their tale ; 
Let every part depending on the chain 
That links it to the whole, point to the hand 
That grasps its term I Let every seed that falls, 
In silent eloquence unfold its store 
Of argument : infinity within, 
Infinity without, belie creation ; 
The exterminable spirit it contains 
Is nature's only God ; but human pride 
Is skilful to invent most serious names 
To hide its ignorance. 

The name of God 
Has fenced about all crime with holiness, 
Himself the creature. of his worshippers, 
Whose names and attributes and passions change, 
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, 
Even with the human dupes who build his shrines, 
Still serving o'er the war-polluted world 
For desolation's watch-word ; whether hosts 
Stain his death-blushing chariot wheels, as on 
Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise 
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans ; 
Or countless partners of his power divide 
His tyranny to weakness ; or the smoke 
Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness, 
Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, 
Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven 
In honour of his name ; or, last and worst, 
Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, 
And priests dare babble of a God of peace, 
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, 
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ 
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, 
Making the earth a slaughter-house ! 

Spirit ! through the sense 
By which thy inner nature was apprised 

Of outward shows vague dreams have roll'd, 
And varied reminiscences have waked 

Tablets that never fade ; 
All things have been imprinted there, 
The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, 
Even the unshapeliest lineaments 
Of wild and fleeting visions 

Have left a record there 

To testify of earth. 

These are my empire, for to me is given 
The wonders of the human world to keep, 



N 



QUEExN MAB. 



And fancy's thin creations to endow 
With manner, being, and reality ; 
Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams 
Of human error's dense and purblind faith, 
1 will evoke, to meet thy questioning. 
Ahasuerus, rise ! 

range anil woe-worn wight 
Arose beside the battlement, 
And stood nnmoving there. 
His inessential figure east no shade 

Upon the golden floor ; 
His port and mien bore mark of many years, 
And chronicles of untold aneientness 
Were legible within his beamless eye : 

Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth ; 
Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame ; 
The wisdom of old age was mingled there 
With youth's primaeval dauntlessness ; 
Aud inexpressible woe, 
Chasten'd by fearless resignation, gave 
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow. 

SPIRIT. 

Is there a God ? 

AHASUERUS. 

Is there a God ! — ay, an almighty God, 
And vengeful as almighty ! Once his voice 
Was heard on earth : earth shudder'd at the sound; 
The fiery-visaged firmament express'd 
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawn'd 
To swallow all the dauntless and the good 
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, 
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves 
Survived, — cold-blooded slaves, who did the work 
Of tyrannous omnipotence ; wdiose souls 
No honest indignation ever urged 
To elevated daring, to one deed 
Which gross and sensual self did not pollute. 
These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend, 
Gorgeous and vast : the costly altars smoked 
With human blood, and hideous paeans rung 
Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer 

heard 
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts 
Had raised him to his eminence in power, 
Accomplice of omnipotence in crime, 
And confidant of the all-knowing one. 
These were Jehovah's words. 

From an eternity of idleness 

I, God, awoke ; in seven days' toil made earth 

From nothing ; rested, and created man : 

I placed him in a paradise, and there 

Planted the tree of evil, so that he 

Might eat and perish, and my soul procure 

Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn, 

Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth, 

All misery to my fame. The race of men 

Chosen to my honour, with impunity 

May sate the lusts I planted in their heart. 

Here I command thee hence to lead them on, 

Until, with harden'd feet, their conquering troops 

Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood, 

And make my name be dreaded through the land. 

Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe 

Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, 

With every soul on this ungrateful earth, 

Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong, — even all 



Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge 
(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God. 

The murderer's brow 
Quiver'd with horror. 

God omnipotent, 
Is there no mercy ? must our punishment 
Be endless ? will long ages roll away, 
And see no term ? Oh ! wherefore hast thou made 
In mockery and wrath this evil earth ? 
Mercy becomes the powerful — be but just : 

God ! repent and save. 

One way remains : 

1 will beget a son, and he shall bear 
The sins of all the world ; he shall arise 
In an unnoticed corner of the earth, 

And there shall die upon a cross, and purge 
The universal crime ; so that the few 
On whom my grace descends, those who are mark'd 
As vessels to the honour of their God, 
May credit this strange sacrifice, and save 
Their souls alive : millions shall live and die, 
Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name, 
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. 
Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale, 
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal : 
These in a gulf of anguish and of flame 
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly, 
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, 
Even on their beds of torment, where they howl, 
My honour, and the justice of their doom. 
What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts 
Of purity, with radiant genius bright, 
Or lit with human reason's earthly ray ! 
Many are called, but few will I elect. 
Do thou my bidding, Moses ! 

Even the murderer's cheek 
Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips 
Scarce faintly uttered — O almighty one, 
I tremble and obey ! 

Spirit ! centuries have set their seal 

On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain, 

Since the Incarnate came : humbly he came, 

Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape 

Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard, 

Save by the rabble of his native town, 

Even as a parish demagogue. He led 

The crowd ; he taught them justice, truth, and 

peace, 
In semblance ; but he lit within their souls 
The quenchless flames of zeal, and blest the sword 
He brought on earth to satiate with the blood 
Of truth and freedom his malignant soul. 
At length his mortal frame was led to death. 

1 stood beside him : on the torturing cross 
No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense ; 
And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed 
The massacres and miseries which his name 
Had sanctioned in my country^ and I cried, 
Go ! go ! in mockery. 

A smile of godlike malice reillumed 

His fading lineaments I go, he cried, 

But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth 

Eternally. The dampness of the grave 

Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, 
And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. 
When I awoke hell burned within my brain, 



QUEEN MAB. 



];> 



Which staggered on its seat ; for all around 
The mouldering relics of my kindred lay, 
Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them, 
And in their various attitudes of death 
My murdered children's mute and eyeless sculls 
Glared ghastly upon me. 

But my soul, 
From sight and sense of the polluting woe 
Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer 
Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven. 
Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began 
My lonely and unending pilgrimage, 
Resolved to wage unweariable war 
With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl 
Defiance at his impotence to harm 
Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand 
That barred my passage to the peaceful grave 
Has crushed the earth to misery, and given 
Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. 
These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn 
Of weak, unstable, and precarious power ; 
Then preaching peace, as now they practise war, 
So, when they turned but from the massacre 
Of unoffending infidels, to quench 
Their thirst for ruin in the very blood 
That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal 
Froze every human feeling, as the wife 
Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel, 
Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love ; 
And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood 
Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war, 
Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught waged, 
Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath ; 
Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace, 
Pointed to victory ! When the fray was done, 
No remnant of the exterminated faith 
Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh, 
With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere, 
That rotted on the half-extinguished pile. 

Yes ! I have seen God's worshippers unsheath 
The sword of his revenge, when grace descended, 
Confirming all unnatural impulses, 
To sanctify their desolating deeds ; 
And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross 
O'er the unhappy earth : then shone the sun 
On showers of gore from the upflashing steel 
Of safe assassination, and all crime 
Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord, 
And blood-red rainbows canopied the land. 

Spirit ! no year of my eventful being 

Has passed unstained by crime and misery, 

Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked 

his slaves, 
With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile 
The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red 
With murder, feign to stretch the other out 
For brotherhood and peace ; and, that they now 
Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds 
Are marked with all the narrowness and crime 
That freedom's young arm dares not yet chastise, 
Reason may claim our gratitude, who now, 
Establishing the imperishable throne 
Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain 
The unprevailing malice of my foe, 
Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave, 
Adds impotent eternities to pain, 
Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast 



To see the smiles of peace around them play, 
To frustrate or to sanctify their doom. 

Thus have I stood, — through a wild waste of years 
Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, 
Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined, 
Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse 
With stubborn and unalterable will, 
Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame 
Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand 
A monument of fadeless ruin there ; 
Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves 
The midnight conflict of the wintry storm, 
As in the sun-light's calm it spreads 
Its worn and withered arms on high 
To meet the quiet of a summer's noon. 

The Fairy waved her wand : 
Ahasuerus fled 
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist, 
That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, 
Flee from the morning beam : 
The matter of which dreams are made 
Not more endowed with actual life 
Than this phantasmal portraiture 
Of wandering human thought. 



VIII. 
The present and the past thou hast beheld : 
It was a desolate sight. Now Spirit, learn, 

The secrets of the future. — Time ! 
Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom, 
Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, 
And from the cradles of eternity, 
Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep 
By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, 
Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — Spirit, behold 
Thy glorious destiny ! 

Joy to the Spirit came. 
Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil, 
Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear : 

Earth was no longer hell ; 

Love, freedom, health, had given 
Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime, 

And all its pulses beat 
Symphonious to the planetary spheres : 

Then dulcet music swelled 
Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; 
It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there, 
Catching new life from transitory death. — 
Like the vague sighings of a wind at even, 
That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea, 
And dies on the creation of its breath, 
And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits : 
Was the pure stream of feeling 
That sprang from these sweet notes, 
And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies 
With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. 

Joy to the Spirit came, — 
Such joy as when a lover sees 
The chosen of his soul in happiness, 

And witnesses her peace 
Whose woe to him were bitterer than death ; 

Sees her unfaded cheek 



its 



QUEEN MAD. 



Glow mantling in th'st luxury of health. 

Thrills with her lovely eyes. 
Which like two stars amid the heaving main 

Sparkle through liquid hliss. 

Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen ■ 

1 will not call the ghost of ages gone 

To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore ; 

The present now is past, 
And those events that desolate the earth 
Have faded from the memory of Time, 
Who dares not give reality to that 
Whose being I annul. To me is given 
The wonders of the human world to keep, 
Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity 
Exposes now its treasure ; let the sight 
Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. 
human Spirit ! spur thee to the goal 
Where virtue fixes universal peace, 
And, 'midst the ehb and flow of human things, 
Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, 
A light-house o'er the wild of dreary waves. 

The habitable earth is full of bliss ; 

Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled 

By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, 

Where matter dared not vegetate nor live, 

But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude 

Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed ; 

And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles 

Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls 

Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, 

Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet 

To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves, 

And melodize with man's blest nature there. 

Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 
Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed 
A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, 
Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love 
Broke on the sultry silentness alone, 
Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, 
Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages ; 
And where the startled wilderness beheld 
A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, 
A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs 
The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, 
While shouts and ho wlings through the desert rang ; 
Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, 
Offering sweet incense to the sun-rise, smiles 
To see a babe before his mother's door, 
Sharing his morning's meal 
With the green and golden basilisk 
That comes to lick his feet. 

Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail 

Has seen above the illimitable plain, 

Morning on night, and night on morning rise, 

Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread 

Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea, 

Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves 

So long have mingled with the gusty wind 

In melancholy loneliness, and swept 

The desert of those ocean solitudes, 

But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek, 

The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm ; 

Now to the sweet and many mingling sounds 

Of kindliest human impulses respond. 

Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, 

With lightsome clouds and shining seas between, 



And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss, 
Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, 
Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, 
To meet the kisses of the flowrets there. 

All things are recreated, and the flame 
Of consentaneous love inspires all life : . 
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck 
To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, 
Rewarding her with their pure perfectness : 
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale 
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad : 
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, 
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream : 
No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, 
Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride 
The foliage of the ever-verdant trees ; 
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, 
And autumn proudly bears her matron grace, 
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring, 
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit 
Reflects its tint, and blushes into love. 

The lion now forgets to thirst for blood : 
There might you see him sporting in the sun 
Beside the dreadless kid ; his claws are sheathed, 
His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made 
His nature as the nature of a lamb. 
Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane 
Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows : 
All bitterness is past ; the cup of joy 
Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim, 
And courts the thirsty lips it fled before. 

But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know 

More misery, and dream more joy than all ; 

Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast 

To mingle with a loftier instinct there, 

Lending their power to pleasure and to pain, 

Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each ; 

Who stands amid the ever-varying world, 

The burthen or the glory of the earth ; 

He chief perceives the change ; his being notes 

The gradual renovation, and defines 

Each movement of its progress on his mind. 

Man, where the gloom of the long polar night 
Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, 
Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost 
Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, 
Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night ; 
His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, 
Insensible to courage, truth, or love, 
His stunted stature and imbecile frame, 
Marked him for some abortion of the earth, 
Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around, 
Whose habits and enjoyments were his own : 
His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe, 
Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled, 
Apprised him ever of the joyless length 
Which his short being's wretchedness had reached; 
His death a pang which famine, cold, and toil, 
Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark 
Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought : 
All was inflicted here that earth's revenge 
Could wreak on the infringers of her law ; 
One curse alone was spared — the name of God. 

Nor, where the tropics bound the realms of day 
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, 



QUEEN MAB. 



17 



Where bluemists through the unmovingatmospheiv 

Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed 

Unnatural vegetation, where the land 

Teemed with all earthquake, tempest, and disease, 

Was man a nobler being ; slavery 

Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained 

dust; 
Or he was bartered for the fame of power, 
Which, all internal impulses destroying, 
Makes human will an article of trade ; 
Or he was changed with Christians for their gold, 
And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound 
Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work 
Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, 
Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads 
The long-protracted fulness of their woe ; 
Or he was led to legal butchery, 
To turn to worms beneath that burning sun 
Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, 
And priests first traded with the name of God. 

Even where the milder zone afforded man 

A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, 

Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, 

Spread like a quenchless fire ; nor truth till late 

Availed to arrest its progress, or create 

That peace which first in bloodless victory waved 

Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime : 

There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, 

The mimic of surrounding misery, 

The jackal of ambition's lion-rage, 

The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal. 

Here now the human being stands adorning 

This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind ; 

Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, 

Which gently in his noble bosom wake 

All kindly passions and all pure desires. 

Him (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, 

Which from the exhaustless store of human weal 

Draws on the virtuous mind) the thoughts that rise 

In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 

With self-enshrined etei-nity, that mocks 

The unprevailing hoariness of age, 

And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene 

Swift as an unremembered vision, stands 

Immortal upon earth : no longer now 

He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, 

And horribly devours his mangled flesh, 

Which, still avenging nature's broken law, 

Kindled all putrid humours in his frame, 

All evil passions, and all vain belief, 

Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind, 

The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. 

No longer now the winged habitants, 

That in the woods their sweet fives sing away, 

Flee from the form of man ; but gather round, 

And prune their sunny feathers on the hands 

Which little children stretch in friendly sport 

Towards these dreadless partners of their play. 

All things are void of terror : man has lost 

His terrible prerogative, and stands 

An equal amidst equals : happiness 

And science dawn, though late, upon the earth ; 

Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame ; 

Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, 

Reason and passion cease to combat there ; 

Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extends 

Its all-subduing energies, and wields 

The sceptre of a vast dominion there ; 



Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends 
Its force to the omnipotence of mind, 
Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth 
To decorate its paradise of peace. 



IX. 

O happy Earth ! reality of Heaven ! 
To which those restless souls that ceaselessly 
Throng through the human universe, aspire ; 
Thou consummation of all mortal hope ! 
Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will ! 
Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time, 
Verge to one point and blend for ever there : 
Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place ! 
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime, 
Languor, disease, and ignorance, dare not come : 
O happy Earth, reality of Heaven ! 

Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams ; 
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness, 
Haunting the human heart, have there entwined 
Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss, 
Where friends and lovers meet to part no more. 
Thou art the end of all desire and will, 
The product of all action ; and the souls 
That by the paths of an aspiring change 
Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, 
There rest from the eternity of toil 
That framed the fabric of thy perfectness. 

Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear ; 
That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride, 
So long had ruled the world, that nations fell 
Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids, 
That for millenniums had withstood the tide 
Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand 
Across that desert where their stones survived 
The name of him whose pride had heaped them 
Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, [there. 

Was but the mushroom of a summer day, 
That his light- winged footstep pressed to dust : 
Time was the king of earth : all things gave way 
Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, 
The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, 
That mocked his fury and prepared his fall. 

Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love ; 
Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene, 
Till from its native heaven they rolled away : 
First, crime triumphant o'er all hope careered 
Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong ; 
Whilst falsehood, tricked in virtue's attributes, 
Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe, 
Till, done by her own venomous sting to death, 
She left the moral world without a law, 
No longer fettering passion's fearless wing. 
Then steadily the happy ferment worked ; 
Reason was free ; and wild though passion went 
Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads, 
Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers, 
Yet, like the bee returning to her queen, 
She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow, 
Who meek and sober, kissed the sportive child, 
No longer trembling at the broken rod. 

Mild was the slow necessity of death : 
The tranquil Spirit failed beneath its grasp. 
Without a groan, almost without a fear, 






Q} BEN MAT, 



Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 

And rail of wonder, full of bopeaa he. 

The deadly germs of languor and die 

Died in the human frame, and purity 

Blest with all gifts her earthly worshippers. 

How rigorous then the athletic form ox age ! 

How clear its open and unwrinkled brow ! 

Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care. 

Had stamped the seal of grey deformity 

(hi all the mingling lineaments of time. 

How lovely the intrepid front of youth ! 

Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest 

Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name, [grace ; 

And elevated will, that journeyed on 

Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness, 

With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. 

Then, that sweet bondage which is freedom's self, 

And rivets with sensation's softest tie 

The kindred sympathies of human souls, 

Needed no fetters of tyrannic law. 

Those delicate and timid impulses 

In nature's primal modesty arose, 

And with undoubting confidence disclosed 

The growing longings of its dawning love, 

Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, 

That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, 

Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. 

No longer prostitution's venomed bane 

Poisoned the springs of happiness and life ; 

Woman and man, in confidence and love, 

Equal and free and pure, together trod 

The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more 

Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet. 

Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride 

The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked 

Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent tear, 

A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw 

Year after year their stones upon the field, 

Wakening a lonely echo ; and the leaves 

Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower 

Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook 

In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower, 

And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear. 

Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles 

The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung : 

It were a sight of awfulness to see 

The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 

So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal ! 

Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall. 

A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death 

To-day, the breathing marble glows above 

To decorate its memory, and tongues 

Are busy of its life : to-morrow, worms 

In silence and in darkness seize their prey. 

Within the massy prison's mouldering courts, 
Fearless and free the ruddy children played, 
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows 
With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, 
That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom ; 
The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, 
There rusted amid heaps of broken stone, 
That mingled slowly with their native earth : 
There the broad beam of day, which feebly once 
Lighted the cheek of lean captivity 
With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone 
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness : 
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair 
Pealed through the echoing vaults, hut soothing notes 



of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds 
Ami merriment were resonant around. 
These ruins soon left not a wreck behind: 
Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe, 
To happier shapes were moulded, and became 
Ministrant to all blissful impulses: 
Thus human things were perfected, and. earth, 
Even as a child beneath its mother's love, 
Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew 
Fairer and nobler with each passing year. 

Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene 
Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past 
Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done : 
Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own, 
With all the fear and all the hope they bring. 
My spells are past : the present now recurs. 
Ah me ! a pathless wilderness remains 
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. 

Yet, human Spirit ! bravely hold thy course, 
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 
The gradual paths of an aspiring change : 
For birth and life and death, and that strange state 
Before the naked soul has found its home, 
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
The restless wheels of being on their way, 
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, 
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal. 
For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape 
New modes of passion to its frame may lend ; 
Life is its state of action, and the store 
Of all events is aggregated there 
That variegate the eternal universe ; 
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies, 
And happy regions of eternal hope. 
Therefore, Spirit ! fearlessly bear on : 
Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, 
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, 
Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth, 
To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower, 
That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, 
Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. 

Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand ; 
So welcome when the tyrant is awake, 
So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns ; 
'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, 
The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. 
Death is no foe to virtue : earth has seen 
Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, 
Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there, 
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. 
Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene 
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed ? 
Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still, 
When to the moonlight walk, by Henry led, 
Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death ? 
And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, 
Listening supinely to a bigot's creed, 
Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod, 
Whose iron thongs are red with human gore ? 
Never : but bravely bearing on, thy will 
Is destined an eternal war to wage 
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 
The germs of misery from the human heart. 
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe 
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



\U 



Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, 
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease : 
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy 
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, 
When fenced by power and master of the world. 
Thou art sincere and good ; of resolute mind, 
Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, 
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. 
Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish 

thee, 
And therefore art thou worthy of the boon 
Which thou hast now received : virtue shall keep 
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, 
And many days of beaming hope shall bless 
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. 
Go, happy one ! and give that bosom joy, 
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
Light, life and rapture from thy smile. 

The Fairy waves her wand of charm. 
Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, 

That rolled beside the battlement, 
Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. 

Again the enchanted steeds were yoked, 

Again the burning wheels inflame 



The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way. 
Fast and far the chariot flew : 
The vast and fiery globes that rolled 
Around the Fairy's palace-gate 
Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared 
Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs 
That there attendant on the solar power 
With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. 

Earth floated then below : 
The chariot paused a moment there ; 

The Spirit then descended : 
The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil, 
Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, 
Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven. 

The Body and the Soul united then ; 
A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame : 
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed ; 
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained : 
She looked around in wonder, and beheld 
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, 
Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love. 
And the bright beaming stars 
That through the casement shone. 



NOTES. 



P. 3, col. 1, 1. 64. 



The sun's unclouded orb 

Rolled through the black concave. 

Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a 
rayless orb of fire in the midst of a black concave. 
The equal diffusion of its light on earth is owing to 
the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their 
reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of 
vibrations propagated through a subtle medium, or of 
numerous minute particles repelled in all directions 
from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly exceeds 
that of any substance with which we are acquainted : 
observations on the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites have 
demonstrated that light takes up no more than 8' 7" 
in passing from the sun to the earth, a distance of 
95,000,000 miles. — Some idea may be gained of the 
immense distance of the fixed stars, when it is computed 
that many years would elapse before light could reach 
this earth from the nearest of them ; yet in one year 
light travels 5,422,400.000,000 miles, which is a dis- 
tance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun 
from the earth. 

P. 3, col. 2, 1. 9. 

Whilst round the chariot's way 
Innumerable systems rolled. 

The plurality of worlds, — the indefinite immensity 
of the universe, — is a most awful subject of contempla- 
tion. He who rightly feels its mystery and grandeur is 
in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of religious 
systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It 
is impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades 
this infinite machine begat a son upon the body of a 
Jewish woman, or is angered at the consequences of 
that necessity which is a synonyme of itself. All that 
miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Inter- 



cessor, with the childish mummeries of the God of 
the Jews, is irreconcileable with the knowledge of the 
stars. The works of his fingers have borne witness 
against him. 

The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably 
distant from the earth, and they are probably propor- 
tionably distant from each other. By a calculation of 
the velocity cf light, Syrius is supposed to be at least 
54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth.* That 
which appears only like a thin and silvery cloud, 
streaking the heaven, is in effect composed of innume- 
rable clusters of suns, each shining with its own light, 
and illuminating numbers of planets that revolve around 
them. Millions and millions of suns are ranged around 
us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm, 
regular, and harmonious, all keeping the paths of im- 
mutable necessity. 

P. 9, col. 1,15. 
These are the hired bravos who defend 
The tyrant's throne. 

To employ murder as a means of justice, is an idea 
which a man of an enlightened mind will not dwell 
upon with pleasure. To march forth in rank and file, 
and all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the 
purpose of shooting at our fellow-men as a mark ; to 
inflict upon them all the variety of wound and anguish ; 
to leave them weltering in their blood ; to wander over 
the field of desolation, and count the number of the 
dying and the dead, — are employments which in thesis 
we may maintain to be necessary, but which no good 
man will contemplate with gratulation and delight. A 
battle we suppose is won : — thus truth is established, 
thus the cause of justice is confirmed ! It surely 
requires no common sagacity to discern the connexion 

* See Nicholson's Encyclopedia, art. Light. 
c 2 



20 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAiJ. 



between this immense beep of calamities and the asser- 
tion of truth or the maintenance of justice. 

Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of 
the calamity, sit unmolested in their cabinet, while 
inst whom the fury of the storm is directed 
are, for the most part, persons who have been trepanned 
into the service, or who are dragged unwillingly from 
their peaceful homes into the field of battle. A soldier 
is a man whose business it is to kill those who never 
offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of 
other men's iniquities. Whatever may become of the 
abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems 
impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved 
and unnatural being. 

To these more serious and momentous considerations 
it may be proper to add a recollection of the ridiculous- 
ness of the military character. Its first constituent 
is obedience ; a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, 
the most completely a machine ; yet his profession 
inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swag- 
gering, and self-consequence : he is like the puppet of 
a show-man, who, at the very time he is made to 
strut and swell, and display the most farcical airs, we 
perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant 
gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as 
he is moved by his exhibitor. — Godwin's Enquirer, 
Essay V. 

1 will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly ex- 
pressive of my abhorrence of despotism and falsehood, 
that 1 fear lest it never again may be depictured so 
vividly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one that 
ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion. 



FALSEHOOD AND VICE. 



Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones 
To hear a famished nation's groans, 
And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe 
That makes its eyes and veins o'erflow, — 
Those thrones, high built upon the heaps 
Of bones where frenzied famine sleeps, 
Where slavery wields her scourge of iron, 
Red with mankind's unheeded gore, 
And war's mad fiends the scene environ, 
Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar, 
There Vice and Falsehood took their stand, 
High raised above th' unhappy land. 

FALSEHOOD. 

Brother ! arise from the dainty fare 

Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow 

A finer feast for thy hungry ear 

Is the news that I bring of human woe. 

VICE. 

And, secret one ! what hast thou done, 
To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me ? 
I, whose career, through the blasted year, 
Has been tracked by despair and agony. 

FALSEHOOD. 

What have I done ? — I have torn the robe 
From baby Truth's unsheltered form, 
And round the desolated globe 
Borne safely the bewildering charm : 
My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor 
Have bound the fearless innocent, 
And streams of fertilizing gore 
Flow from her bosom's hideous rent, 



Which this unfailing dagger gave .... 
I dread that blood! — no more — this day 
Is ours, though her eternal ray 
Must shiue upon our grave. 
Yet know, proud V'.ce, had I not given 
To thee the robe I stole from heaven, 
Thy shape of ugliness and fear 
Had never gained admission here. 

VICE. 

Aud know that, had I disdained to toil, 

But sate in my loathsome cave the while, 

And ne'er to these hateful sons of heaven 

Gold, monarchy, and murder, given ; 

Hadst thou with all thine art essayed 

One of thy games then to have played, 

With all thine overweening boast, 

Falsehood, I tell thee thou hadst lost \ — 

Yet wherefore this dispute ? — we tend, 

Fraternal, to one common end ; 

In this cold grave beneath my feet 

Will our hopes, our fears, and our labours, meet. 

FALSEHOOD. 

I brought my daughter, religion, on earth ; 

She smothered Reason's babes in their birth ; 

But dreaded their mother's eye severe, — 

So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear, 

And loosed her bloodhounds from the den .... 

They started from dreams of slaughtered men, 

And, by the light of her poison eye, 

Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully ; 

The dreadful stench of her torches' flare, 

Fed with human fat, polluted the air : 

The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries 

Of the many mingling miseries, 

As on she trod, ascended high 

And trumpeted my victory ! — 

Brother, tell what thou hast done. 



I have extinguished the noon-day sun 

In the carnage-smoke of battles won : 

Famine, murder, hell, and power, 

Were glutted in that glorious hour, 

W T hich searchless fate had stamped for me 

With the seal of her security .... 

For the bloated wretch on yonder throne 

Commanded the bloody fray to rise — 

Like me, he joyed at the stifled moan 

Wrung from a nation's miseries ; 

While the snakes, whose slime even him defileo. 

In ecstacies of malice smiled : 

They thought 'twas theirs, — but mine the deed ! 

Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed — 

Ten thousand victims madly bleed. 

They dream that tyrants goad them there 

With poisonous war to taint the air : 

These tyrants, on their beds of thorn, 

Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame, 

And with their gains to lift my name, 

Restless they plan from night to morn : 

I — I do all ; without my aid 

Thy daughter, that relentless maid, 

Could never o'er a death-bed urge 

The fury of her venomed scourge. 

FALSEHOOD. 

Brother, well ! — the world is ours ; 
Aud whether thou or I have won, 
The pestilence expectant lowers 
On all beneath yon blasted sun. 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



Our joys, our toils, our honours, meet 

In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet; 

A short-lived hope, unceasing care, 

Some heartless scraps of godly prayer, 

A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep 

Ere gapes the grave's unclosing deep, 

A tyrant's dream, a coward's start, 

That ice that clings to a priestly heart, 

A judge's frown, a courtier's smile, 

Make the great whole for which we toil ; 

And, brother, whether thou or I 

Have done the work of misery, 

It little boots : thy toil and pain, 

Without my aid, were more than vain ; 

And but for thee I ne'er had sate 

The guardian of heaven's palace gate. 

P. 9, col. 2, 1. 27. 

Thus do the generations of the earth 

Go to the grave and issue from the womb. 

" One generation passeth away and another gene- 
ration cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. The 
sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth 
to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward 
the south, and turneth about unto the north ; it whirleth 
about continually, and the wind returneth again ac- 
cording to his circuits. All the rivers run into the 
sea, yet the sea is not full ; unto the place whence the 
rivers come, thither shall they return again." — Eccle- 
siastes, chap. i. 

P. 9, col. 2, 1. 30. 

Even as the leaves 
Which the keen frost-wind of the waning pear 
Has scattered on the forest soil. 

O'lr] irep <pvKka>v yevt)), ror^Se Ka\ avb'p&v. 
$vA\a to. fxiv t &veiJ.os ^a^aSis X* e h &M« Se B* v\r) 
TrjXtddwo-a <pi/ei* eapos 8 iiriyiyveTai 8>pri. 
°ns dvSpwu yeve)), 7) p\v <puei, ?}8' a7roA^7€i. 

IAIAA. Z'. 1.146. 

P. 10, col. 1,1.19. 

The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings. 

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, 
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem : 
Non, quia vexari quemquam 'st jocunda voluptas, 
Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave 'st. 
Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli, 
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri : 
Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere, 
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena ; 
Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre 
Errare, atque viam palanteis quserere vitae; 
Certare ingenio ; contendere nobilitate, 
Noeteis atque dies niti prasstante labore 
Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri. 
O miseras hominum menteis ! O pectora caeca ! 

Lucret. lib. ii. 

P. 10, col. 1, 1. 55. 

And statesmen boast 
Of wealth ! 

There is no real wealth but the labour of man. 
Were the mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, 
the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; 
no one comfort would be added to the human race. In 
consequence of our consideration forthe precious metals, 
one man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the 
expense of the necessaries of his neighbour ; a system 



admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of disease 
and crime, which never fail to characterise Ihe two 
extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator takes 
pride to himself as the promoter of his country's pros- 
perity, who employs a number of hands in the manu- 
facture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subser- 
vient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and 
ostentation. The nobleman who employs the peasants 
of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until 
"jam pauca aratro jugera, regice moles relinquent" 
flatters himself that he has gained the title of a patriot 
by yielding to the impulses of vanity. The show and 
pomp of courts adduce the same apology for their con- 
tinuance ; and many a fftte has been -given, many a 
woman has eclipsed her beauty by her dress, to benefit 
the labouring poor and to encourage trade. Who does 
not see that this is a remedy which aggravates, whilst 
it palliates, the countless diseases of society ? The 
poor are set to labour, — for what ? Not the food for 
which they famish : not the blankets for want of 
which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miser- 
able hovels : not those comforts of civilisation without 
which civilised man is far more miserable than the 
meanest savage ; oppressed as he is by all its insidious 
evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its 
innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him : 
— no ; for the pride of power, for the miserable isola- 
tion of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth 
part of society. No greater evidence is afforded of the 
wide-extended and radical mistakes of civilised man 
than this fact : those arts which are essential to his 
very being are held in the greatest contempt ; employ- 
ments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their useful- 
ness * : the jeweller, the toyman, the actor, gains fame 
and wealth by the exercise of his useless and ridiculous 
art ; whilst the cultivator of the earth, he without 
whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through 
contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine 
which, but for his unceasing exertion, would annihilate 
the rest of mankind. 

I will not insult common sense by insisting on the 
doctrine of the natural equality of man. The question 
is not concerning its desirableness, but its practicabil- 
ity ; so far as it is practicable, it is desirable. That 
state of human society which approaches nearer to an 
equal partition of its benefits and evils should, cceteris 
paribus, be preferred ; but so long as we conceive that 
a wanton expenditure of human labour, not for the 
necessities, not even for the luxuries, of the mass of 
society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few 
of its members, is defensible on the ground of public 
justice, so long we neglect to approximate to' the re- 
demption of the human race. 

Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral 
improvement : from the former of these advantages 
the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevit- 
able conditions of their respective situations, are pre- 
cluded. A state which should combine the advantages 
of both would be subjected to the evils of neither. He 
that is deficient in firm health, or vigorous intellect, is 
but half a man ; hence it follows, that, to subject the 
labouring classes to unnecessary labour, is wantonly to 
deprive them of any opportunities of intellectual im- 
provement : and that the rich are heaping up for their 
own mischief the disease, lassitude, and ennui, by which 
their existence is rendered an intolerable burden. 

English reformers exclaim against sinecures, — but 
the true pension list is the rent-roll of the landed pro 

* See Rousseau, " De l'lnegalite parmi les Homines 
note 1. 



88 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



piietors : wealth is • power usurped l-v tlie few, to 
compel the many to labour for their benefit. The 
laws which support this system derive their force from 
the ignorance ami credulity of its victims : they are 
the result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, 
who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-emi- 
nence by the loss of all real comfort. |§|i° 

The commodities that substantially contribute to 
the subsistence of the human species form a very short 
catalogue : they demand from us but a slender por- 
tion of industry. If these only were produced, and 
sufficiently produced, the species of man would be 
continued. If the labour necessarily required to pro- 
duce them were equitably divided among the poor, 
and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, 
each man's share of labour would be light, and his 
portiou of leisure would be ample. There was a time 
when this leisure would have been of small compara- 
tive value : it is to be hoped that the time will come 
when it will be applied to the most important purposes. 
Those hours, which are not required for the production 
of the ueeessaries of life, may be devoted to the culti- 
vation of the understanding, the enlargement of our 
stock of knowledge, the refinement of our taste, and 
thus open to us new and more exquisite sources of 
enjoyment. 

******* 

It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly 
and oppression should subsist, before a period of cul- 
tivated equality could subsist. Savages perhaps would 
never have been excited to the discovery of truth and 
the invention of art, but by the narrow motives which 
6iich a period affords. But, surely, after the savage 
state has ceased, and men have set out in the glorious 
career of discovery and invention, monopoly and op- 
pression cannot be necessary to prevent them from 
returning to a state of barbarism. — Godwin's En- 
quirer, Essay II. See also Pol. Jus. book viii. 
chap. 11. 

It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all 
the conveniences of civilised life might be produced, 
if society would divide the labour equally among its 
members, by each individual being employed in labour 
two hours during the day. 

P. 10, col. 2, 1. 8. 

Or religion 
Drives his wife raving mad. 

I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accom- 
plishments, and the mother of a numerous family, 
whom the Christian religion has goaded to incurable 
insanity. A parallel case is, I believe, within the 
experience of every physician. 

Nam jam saepe homines patriam, carosque parentes 
Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes. 

Lucretius. 

P. 11, col. 1, 1. 19. 
Even love is sold. 
Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt 
from the despotism of positive institution. Law pre- 
tends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of 
passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of 
reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the 
involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inevit- 
ably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love 
withers under constraint : its very essence is liberty : 
it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor 
fear : it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, 



whore its votaries live in confidence, equality, and 
unreserve. 

How long then ought the sexual connexion to last ? 
what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances 
which should limit its duration ? A husband aud wife 
ought to continue so long united as they love each 
other: any law, which should bind them to cohabitation 
for one moment after the decay of their affection, would 
be a most intolerable tyranny/, and the most unworthy 
of toleration. How odious a usurpation of the right 
of private judgment should that law be considered 
which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, 
in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, 
and capacity for improvement of the human mind ? 
Aud by so much would the fetters of love be heavier 
and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love 
is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on 
those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less 
capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the 
object. 

The state of society in which we exist is a mixture 
of feudal savageness and imperfect civilisation. The 
narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian 
religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even 
until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness 
is the sole end of the science of ethics, as of all other 
sciences ; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the 
flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have 
heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour 
of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling ! * 

But if happiness be the object of morality, of all 
human unions and disunions; if the worthiness of 
every action is to be estimated by the quantity of 
pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then 
the connexion of the sexes is so long sacred as it con- 
tributes to the comfort of the parties, and is naturally 
dissolved when its evils are greater than its benefits. 
There is nothing immoral in this separation. Con- 
stancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of 
the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporising 
spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral 
defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet 
choice. Love is free : to promise for ever to love the 
same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to 
believe the same creed : such a vow, in both cases, 
excludes us from all inquiry. The language of the 
votarist is this : The woman I now love may be in- 
finitely inferior to many others ; the creed I now 
profess may be a mass of errors and absurdities ; but 
I exclude myself from all future information as to the 
amiability of the one and the truth of the other, re- 
solving blindly, and in spite of conviction, to adhere to 
them. Is this the language of delicacy and reason ? 
Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth than 
its belief? 

The present system of constraint does no more, in 
the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or 
open enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, un- 
happily united to those whom they find it impossible to 

* The first Christian emperor made a law by which 
seduction was punished with death: if the female pleaded 
her own consent, she also was punished with death ; if 
the parents endeavoured to screen the criminals, they 
were banished and their estates confiscated ; the slaves 
who might be accessory were burned alive, or forced 
to swallow melted lead. The very offspring of an illegal 
love were involved in the consequences of the sentence. — 
Gibbon's Decline and Fall. $c, vol. ii. page 210. See also, 
for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love, and even 
marriage, page 269. 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



23 



love, spend the loveliest season of their life in unpro- 
ductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for 
the sake of the feelings of their partner, or the welfare 
of their mutual offspring : those of less generosity and 
refinement openly avow their disappointment, and 
linger out the remnant of that union, which only death 
can dissolve, in a state of incurable bickering and 
hostility. The early education of the children takes 
its colour from the squabbles of the parents ; they are 
nursed in a systematic school of ill humour, violence, 
and falsehood. Had they been suffered to part at 
the moment when indifference rendered their uuion 
irksome, they would have been spared many years of 
misery ; they would have connected themselves more 
suitably, and would have found that happiness in the 
society of more congenial partners which is for ever 
denied them by the despotism of marriage. They 
would have been separately useful and happy members 
of society, who, whilst united, were miserable, and 
rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction 
that wedlock is indissoluble, holds out the strongest 
of all temptations to the perverse : they indulge with- 
out restraint in acrimony, and all the little tyrannies 
of domestic life, when they know that their victim is 
without appeal. If this connection were put on a 
rational basis, each would be assured that habitual ill 
temper would terminate in separation, and would check 
this vicious and dangerous propensity. 

Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage 
and its accompanying errors. Women, for no other 
crime than having followed the dictates of a natural 
appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and 
sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder : 
and the punishment which is inflicted on her who 
destroys her child to escape reproach, is lighter than 
the life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is 
irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the 
impulse of unerring nature? — society declares war 
against her, pitiless and eternal war : she must he the 
tame slave, she must make no reprisals ; theirs is the 
right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She 
lives a life of infamy : the loud and bitter laugh of 
scorn scares her from all return. She dies of long and 
lingering disease ; yet she is in fault, she is the criminal, 
she the froward and untameable child, — and society, 
forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron who casts her 
as an abortion from her undefiled bosom ! Society 
avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation; she 
is employed in anathematising the vice to-day, which 
yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is 
formed one-tenth of the population of London : mean- 
while the evil is twofold. Young men, excluded by 
the fanatical idea of chastity from the society of modest 
and accomplished women, associate with these vicious 
and miserable beings, — destroying thereby all those 
exquisite and delicate sensibilities whose existence 
cold-hearted worldlings have denied ; annihilating all 
genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling 
which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. 
Their body and mind alike crumble into a hideous 
wreck of humanity ; idiotcy and disease become per- 
petuated in their miserable offspring, and distant gene- 
rations suffer for the bigoted morality of their fore- 
fathers. Chastity is a monkish and evangelical super- 
stition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than 
uuintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all 
domestic happiness, and consigns more than half the 
human race to misery, that some few may monopolise 
according to law. A system could uot well have been 



devised more studiously hostile to human happiness 
than marriage. 

I conceive that, from the abolition of marriage, the 
fit and natural arrangement of sexual connexion would 
result. I by no means assert that the intercourse would 
be promiscuous : on the contrary, it appears, from the 
relation of parent to child, that this union is generally 
of long duration, and marked above all others with 
generosity and self-devotion. But this is a subject 
which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That which 
will result from the abolition of marriage, will be 
natural and right, because choice and change will be 
exempted from restraint. 

In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, 
compose a practical code of misery and servitude : the 
genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from 
the accursed book of God, ere man can read the in- 
scription on his heart. How would morality, dressed 
up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own dis- 
gusting image, should she look in the mirror of nature ! 

P 12, col. 1, 1. 5. 

To the red and baleful sun 
That faintly twinkles there 

The north polar star, to which the axis of the earth, 
in its present state of obliquity, points. It is exceed- 
ingly probable, from many considerations, that this 
obliquity will gradually diminish, until the equator 
coincides with the ecliptic : the nights and days will 
then become equal on the earth throughout the year, 
and probably the seasons also. There is no great 
extravagance in presuming that the progress of the 
perpendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the 
progress of intellect ; or that there should be a perfect 
identity between the moral and physical improvement 
of the human species. It is certain that wisdom is not 
compatible with disease, and that, in the present state 
of the climates of the earth, health, in the true and 
comprehensive sense of the word, is out of the reach 
of civilised man. Astronomy teaches us that the earth 
is now in its progress, and that the poles are every year 
becoming more and more perpendicular to the ecliptic. 
The strong evidence afforded by the history of mytho- 
logy and geological researches, that some event of this 
nature has taken place already, affords a strong pre- 
sumption that this progress is not merely an oscillation, 
as has been surmised by some late astronomers *. 
Bones of animals peculiar to the torrid zone have been 
found in the north of Siberia, and on the banks of the 
river Ohio. Plants have been found in the fossil state 
in the interior of Germany, which demand the present 
climate of Hindostan for their production f. The 
researches of M. Bailly J establish the existence of a 
people who inhabited a tract in Tartary 49° north 
latitude, of greater antiquity than either the Indians, 
the Chinese, or the Chaldeans, from whom these nations 
derived their sciences and theology. We find, from 
the testimony of ancient writers, that Britain, Ger- 
many, and France, were much colder than at present, 
and that their great rivers were annually frozen over. 
Astronomy teaches us also, that since this period the 
obliquity of the earth's position has been considerably 
diminished. tfigir 

* Laplace, Systeme du Monde. 

fCabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Hommo, 
vol. ii. page 406. 
t Let tret, sur les Sciences, a. Voltaire. — Bailly. 






NOTES ON QUEEN M.\U. 



i. 89 

/til/tit 
u iin,l unnecestitaUd tusk. 
Or tuts but t\s it must and outjht to act. 
IVux i xcinplcs scrviiont a nous reiulro plus sensible 
le principc qui vicnt d'etre pose: nous cmpiuntcrons 
l'un tin physique ft l'atitre ilu moral. Dans nn tour- 
billon do pouasiere quVlcve un vent impetucux, quelque 
,'i! paTOUSC ■ Ml _\eux ; dans la plus atl'icuse 
toinjH'to excite par dee vents opposes qui eoulevtal Irs 
Mots, il n\ I pas line seule molecule da poussii-rc mi 
d'eau qui suit place au Jiasard, qui n'ait sa cause 
pour OCCuper le lieu oh elle se trouvc, et (]ui 
i igouieusemciit de la maniore dont elle doit 
agir. In geometrB qui conaoltrail ex&ctement les 

ditfercntcs forces qui agissent dans ces deux cas, et les 
projuietes des molecules qui sunt nines, demontreroit 
que d'apres des cause* donnees, cliaque molecule agit 
oent comnie elle doit agir, et ne pent agir autre- 
ment qu'elle ne fait. 

DlQI les convulsions tcrribles qui agitent quclquefois 
les soeietes politique*, et qui produisent souvent le 
i enversement d'un empire, il n'y a pas une seule action, 
une seule parole, vine seule pensee, une seule volonte, 
une seule passion dans les agens qui concourent a la 
revolution comme destructeurs on coinme victimes, 
qui nc soit necessairc, qui n'agisse comme elle doit agir, 
quin'opereinfailliblement les effets qu'elle doit operer 
suivant la place qu'occupent ccs agens dans ce tour- 
billon moral. Cela paroitroit evident pour une intel- 
ligence qui sera en etat dc saisir et d'apprecier toutes 
les actions et reactions des esprits et des corps de ceux 
qui eontribucnt a cette revolution. — Systeme de la 
Nature, vol. i. page 44. 

P. J3, col. 1. 1. 23. 
Necessity, thou mother of the world ! 

He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity, means 
that, contemplating the events which compose the moral 
and material universe, be beholds only an immense 
and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one 
of which could occupy any other place than it does 
occupy, or act in any other place than it does act. 
The idea of necessity is obtained by our experience of 
the connection between objects, the uniformity of the 
operations of nature, the constant conjunction of simi- 
lar events, and the consequent inference of one from 
the other. Mankind are therefore agreed in the ad- 
mission of necessity, if they admit that these two cir- 
cumstances take place in voluntary action. Motive is, 
to voluntary action in the human mind, what cause is 
to effect in the material universe. The word liberty, 
as applied to mind, is analogous to the word chance as 
applied to matter : they spring from an ignorance of 
the certainty of the conjunction of antecedents and 
consequents. 

Every human being is irresistibly impelled to act 
precisely as be does act : in the eternity which pre- 
ceded his birth a chain of causes was generated, which, 
operating under the name of motives, make it impos- 
sible that any thought of his mind, or any action of 
his life, should be otherwise than it is. Were the 
doctrine of Necessity false, the human mind would no 
longer be a legitimate object of science; from like 
causes it would be in vain that we should expect like 
effects; the strongest motive would no longer be 
paramount over the conduct ; all knowledge would be 
vague and undcterminate ; we could not predict with 



an\ certainty that we might not meet as an enemv to- 
morrow him from whom we have parted in friendship 
tonight ; the most probable inducements and the 
clearest reasonings would lose the invariable influence 
they possess. The contrary of this is demonstrably 
the fact. Similar circumstances produce invariably 
similar effects. The precise character and motives of 
any man on any occasion being given, the moral phi- 
losopher could predict his actions with as much cer- 
taint] , as the natural philosophercould predict theeff'ects 
of the mixture of any particular chemical substances. 
Why is the aged husbandman more experienced than 
the young beginner ? Because there is a uniform, 
undeniable necessity in the operations of the material 
universe. Why is the old statesman more skilful than 
the raw politician P Because, relying on the necessary 
conjunction of motive and action, he proceeds to produce 
moral effects, by the application of those moral causes 
which experience has shown to be effectual. Some actions 
may be found to which we can attach no motives, but these 
are the effects of causes with which we are unacquainted. 
Hence the relation which motive bears to voluntary 
action, is that of cause to effect ; nor, placed in this 
point of view, is it, or ever has it been, the subject of 
popular or philosophical dispute. None but the few 
fanatics who are engaged in the herculean task of re- 
conciling the justice of their God with the misery of 
man, will longer outrage common sense by the suppo- 
sition of an event without a cause, a voluntary action 
without a motive. History, politics, morals, criticism, 
all grounds of- reasoning, all principles of science, 
alike assume the truth of the doctrine of Necessity 
No fanner carrying his corn to market doubts the salo 
of it at the market price. The master of a manufac-. 
tory no more doubts that he can purchase the human 
labour necessary for his purposes, than that his ma- 
chines will act as they have been accustomed to act. 

But, whilst none have scrupled to admit necessity as 
influencing matter, many have disputed its dominion 
over mind. Independent of its militating with the 
received ideas of the justice of God, it is by no means 
obvious to a superficial inquiry. When the mind 
observes its own operations, it feels no connection of 
motive and action : but as we know "nothing more of 
causation than the constant conjunction of objects and 
the consequent inference of one from the other, as we 
find that these two circumstances are universally 
allowed to have place in voluntary action, we may be 
easily led to own that they are subjected to the neces- 
sity common to all causes." The actions of the will 
have a regular conjunction with circumstances and 
characters ; motive is, to voluntary action, what cause 
is to effect. But the only idea that we can form of 
causation is a constant conjunction of similar objects, 
and the consequent inference of one from the other : 
wherever this is the case, necessity is clearly esta- 
blished. 

The idea of liberty, applied metaphorically to the 
will, has sprung from a misconception of the meaning 
of the word power. What is power ? — id quod potest, 
that which can produce any given effect. To deny 
power, is to say that nothing can or has the power to 
be or act. In the only true sense of the word power, 
it applies with equal force to the loadstone as to the 
human will. Do you think these motives, which I 
shall present, are powerful enough to rouse him ? is a 
question just as common as, Do you think this lever 
has the power of raising this weight? The advocates 
of free-will assert, that the will has the power of re- 
fusing to be determined by the strongest motive : hut 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 






the strongest motive is that wliich, overcoming all 
others, ultimately prevails; this assertion therefore 
amounts to a denial of the will being ultimately deter- 
mined by that motive which Joes determine it, wliich 
is absurd. But it is equally certain that a man cannot 
resist the strongest motive, as that he cannot overcome 
a physical impossibility. 

The doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great 
change into the established notions of morality, and 
utterly to destroy religion. Reward and punishment 
must be considered, by the Necessarian, merely as 
motives which he would employ in order to procure 
the adoption or abandonment of any given line of con- 
duct. Desert, in the present sense of the word, would 
no longer have any meaning ; and he, who should in- 
flict pain upon another for no better reason than that he 
deserved it, would only gratify his revenge under pre- 
tence of satisfying justice. It is not enough, says the 
advocate of free-will, that a criminal should be pre- 
vented from a repetition of his crime ; he should feel 
pain ; and his torments, when justly inflicted, ought 
precisely to be proportioned to his fault. But utility 
is morality ; that which is incapable of producing hap- 
piness is useless ; and though the crime of Damiens 
must be condemned, yet the frightful torments which 
revenge, under the name of justice, inflicted on this 
unhappy man, cannot be supposed to have augmented, 
even at the long-run, the stock of pleasurable sensation 
in the world. At the same time, the doctrine of Ne- 
cessity does not in the least diminish our disappro- 
bation of vice. The conviction which all feel, that 
a viper is a poisonous animal, and that a tiger is con- 
strained, by the inevitable condition of his existence, 
to devour men, does not induce us to avoid them less 
sedulously, or, even more, to hesitate in destroying 
them : but he would surely be of a hard heart, who 
meeting with a serpent on a desert island, or in a situa- 
tion where it was incapable of injury, should wantonly 
deprive it of existence. A Necessarian is inconse- 
quent to his own principles, if he indulges in hatred or 
contempt ; the compassion which he feels for the cri- 
minal is unmixed with a desire of injuring him : he 
looks with an elevated and dreadless composure upon 
the links of the universal chain as they pass before his 
eyes ; whilst cowardice, curiosity and inconsistency, 
only assail him in proportion to the feebleness and in- 
distinctness with which he has perceived and rejected 
the delusions of free-will. 

Religion is the perception of the relation in which 
we stand to the principle of the universe. But if the 
principle of the universe be not an organic being, the 
model and prototype of man, the relation between it 
and human beings is absolutely none. Without 
some insight into its will respecting our actions, religion 
is nugatory and vain. But will is only a mode of 
animal mind ; moral qualities also are such as only a 
human being can possess; to attribute them to the 
principle of the universe, is to annex to it properties 
incompatible with any possible definition of its nature. 
It is probable that the word God was originally only an 
expression denoting the unknown cause of the known 
events which men perceived in the universe. By the 
vulgar mistake of a metaphor for a real being, of a 
word for a thing, it became a man, endowed with human 
qualities and governing the universe, as an earthly 
monarch governs his kingdom. Their addresses to this 
imaginary being, indeed, are much in the same style 
as those of subjects to a king. They acknowledge his 
benevolence, deprecate his anger and supplicate his 
favour. 



But the doctrine of Necessity teaches us, that in no 
case could any event have happened otherwise than it 
did happen ; and that, if God is the author of good, he is 
also the author of evil ; that, if he is entitled to our 
gratitude for the one, he is entitled to our hatred for 
the other ; that admitting the existence of this hypo- 
thetic being, he is also subjected to the dominion of an 
immutable necessity. It is plain that the same argu- 
ments which prove that God is the author of food, light, 
and life, prove him also to be the author of poison, 
darkness and death. The wide- wasting earthquake, 
the storm, the battle, and the tyranny, are attributable 
to this hypothetic being, in the same degree as the 
fairest forms of nature, sunshine, liberty, and peace. 

But we are taught, by the doctrine of Necessity, 
that there is neither good nor evil in the universe, 
otherwise than as the events to which we apply these 
epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of 
being. Still less than with the hypothesis of a God, will 
the doctrine of Necessity accord with the belief of a 
future state of punishment. God made man such as 
he is, and then damned him for being so : for to say 
that God was the author of all good, and man the 
author of all evil, is to say that one man made a straight 
line and a crooked one, and another man made the in- 
congruity, tggr 

A Mahometan story, much to the present purpose, 
is recorded, wherein Adam and Moses are introduced 
disputing before God in the following manner. " Thou," 
says Moses, " art Adam, whom God created, and ani- 
mated with the breath of life, and caused to be wor- 
shipped by the angels, and placed in Paradise, from 
whence mankind have been expelled for thy fault." 
Whereto Adam answered, " Thou art Moses, whom 
God chose for his apostle, and entrusted with his 
word, by giving thee the tables of the law, and whom 
he vouchsafed to admit to discourse with himself. 
How many years dost thou find the law was written 
before I was created ? " Says Moses, " Forty." 
" And dost thou not find," replied Adam, " these 
words therein, ' and Adam rebelled against his Lord 
and transgressed ? ' " Which Moses confessing, " Dost 
thou therefore blame me," continued he, "for doing that 
which God wrote of me that I should do, forty years 
before I was created ; nay, for what was decreed con- 
cerning me fifty thousand years before the creation of 
heaven and earth ? " — Sale's Prelim. Disc, to the 
Koran, page 164. 

P. 13, col. 2, 1. 14. 
There is no God ! 

This negation must be understood solely to affect a 
creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit, 
coeternal with the universe, remains unshaken. 

A close examination of the validity of the proofs 
adduced to support any proposition, is the only secure 
way of attaining truth, on the advantages of which it is 
unnecessary to descant : our knowledge of the exist- 
ence of a Deity is a subject of such importance, that it 
cannot be too minutely investigated ; in consequence 
of this conviction we proceed briefly and impartially to 
examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is 
necessary first to consider the nature of belief. 

When a proposition is offered to the mind, it per- 
ceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of 
which it is composed. A perception of their agree- 
ment is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently 
prevent this perception from being immediate ; these 
the mind attempts to remove, in order that the percep- 
tion mav be distinct. The mind is active in the inves- 






NOTES ON QUEEN MAI',. 



to |k it'cit the Mate of perception of 

tin* relation which tin- component IdetS of the proposi- 
tion Uar to each, which il passive; the investigation, 
beonf confused with llu« perception, has induced many 

Imagine that the Bind is active in belief, — 

that belief is Hn art of volition, — in consequence of 
which it may ha regulated by the mind. Pursuing, 
continuing this mistake, they have attached a deglM of 
criminality to disbelief; of which, in its nature, it is 
thle: it is equally incapable of merit. 

Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like 
thor paction, is in precise proportion to the 
degrees, of eatcitomant. 

The degreea of excitement arc three. 

Tin' aoncea are the sources, of all knowledge to the 
mind ; consequently their evidence claims the strongest 

The decision of the mind, founded upon our own 
exp e rienc e, derived from these sources, claims the next 

The experience of others, which addresses itself to 
the former one, occupies the lowest degree. 

t A g rad ua t ed scale, on which should be marked 
the capabilities of propositions to approach the test of 
the senses, would he a just barometer of the belief 
which ought to be attached to them.) 

Consequently, no testimony can he admitted which is 
contrary to reason ; reason is founded on the evidence 
of our senses. 

Every proof may be referred to one of these three 
divisions : it is to be considered what arguments we 
receive from each of them, which should convince us 
of the existence of a Deity. 

1st. The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should 
appear to us, if he should convince our senses of his 
existence, this revelation would necessarily command 
belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared 
have the strongest possible conviction of his existence. 
But the God of theologians is incapable of local visi- 
bility. 

2d. Reason. It is urged that man knows tnat what- 
ever is, must either have had a beginning, or have 
existed from all eternity : he also knows, that whatever 
is not eternal must have had a cause. When this rea- 
soning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to 
prove that it was created : until that is clearly demon- 
strated, we may reasonably suppose that it has endured 
from all eternity. We must prove design before we can 
infer a designer. The only idea which we can form of 
causation is derivable from the constant conjunction of 
objects, and the consequent inference of one from the 
other. In a case where two propositions are diametri- 
cally opposite, the mind believes that which is least 
incomprehensible; — it is easier to suppose that the 
universe has existed from all eternity, than to conceive 
a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the 
mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an allevia- 
tion to increase the intolerability of the burthen ? 

The other argument, which is founded on a man's 
knowledge of his own existence, stands thus. A man 
knows not only that he now is, but that once he was 
not; consequently there must have been a cause. But 
our idea of causation is alone derivable from the con- 
stant conjunction of objects and the consequent infer- 
ence of one from the other ; and, reasoning experimen- 
tally, we can only infer from effects, causes exactly 
Adequate to those effects. But there certainly is a 
generative power which is effected by certain instru- 
ments : wc cannot prove that it is inherent in these 
instruments ; nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of 



demonstration ; we admit that the generative power is 
incomprehensible; hut to suppose that the same effect 

is produced by an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, 
being, leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but ren- 
deis it more incomprehensible. 

3d. Testimony. It is required that testimony should 
not be contrary to reason. The testimony that the 
Deity convinces the senses of men of his existence can 
only be admitted by us, if our mind considers it less 
probable that these men should have been deceived, 
than that the Deity should have appeared to them. 
Our reason can never admit the testimony of men, who 
not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of 
miracles, but that the Deity was irrational ; for he 
commanded that he should be believed, he proposed 
the highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments for 
disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions ; 
belief is not an act of volition ; the mind is even pas 
sive, or involuntarily active : from this it is evident 
that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that 
testimony is insufficient, to prove the being of a God. 
It has been before shown that it cannot be deduced from 
reason. They alone, then, who have been convinced 
by the evidence of the senses, can believe it. 

Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from any 
of the three sources of conviction, the mind cannot 
believe the existence of a creative God : it is also evi- 
dent that, as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of 
criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they only 
are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false me- 
dium through which their mind views any subject of 
discussion. Every reflecting mind must acknowledge, 
that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity. 

God is an hypothesis, and as such, stands in need of 
proof; the onus probandi rests on the theist. Sir Isaac 
Newton says : " Hypotheses non fingo, quicquid enim 
ex phenomenis non deducitur hypothesis vocanda est, 
et hypothesis vel meta physicac, vel physics, vel quali- 
tatum occultarum, seu mechanics, in philosophia locum 
non habent.'' To all proofs of the existence of a cre- 
ative God apply this valuable rule. We see a variety 
of bodies possessing a variety of powers ; we merely 
know their effects ; we are in a state of ignorance with 
respect to their essences and causes. These Newton 
calls the phenomena of things ; but the pride of philo- 
sophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes. 
From the phenomena, which are the objects of our 
senses, we attempt to infer a cause, which we call God, 
and gratuitously endow it with all negative and contra- 
dictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent this 
general name, to conceal our ignorance of causes and 
essences. The being called God by no means answers 
with the conditions prescribed by Newton ; it bears 
every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, 
to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from them- 
selves. They borrow the threads of its texture from 
the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words have 
been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the 
occult qualities of the Peripatetics to the effluvium of 
Boyle and the crinities or nebula of Herschel. God 
is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; 
he is contained under every predicate in non that the 
logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even his worshippers 
allow that it is impossible to form any idea of him ; 
they exclaim with the French poet, 

Pour direce qu'il est, il faut etre lui-meme. 

Lord Bacon says, that "atheism leaves to man reason, 
philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and every- 
thing that can serve to conduct him to virtue; but 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



n 



superstition destroys all these, am! erects itself into a 
tyranny over tho understandings of men : hence atheism 
never disturbs the government, hut renders man more 
clear-sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the bounda- 
ries of the present life." — Bacon's Moral Essays. 

La premiere theologie do l'homme lui fit d'abord 
eraindre et adorer les elements meme, des objets mate- 
riels et grossiers ; il rendit ensuite ses hommages a des 
agents presidents aux elements, a des geuies inferieurs, 
a des heros, ou a des homines doues de grandes qua- 
lites. A force de reflechir, il crut simplifier les choses 
en soumettant la nature cntiere a un seul agent, a un 
esprit, a une ame universelle, qui mettoit cette nature et 
ses parties en mouvement. En remontant de causes en 
causes, les mortels ont fini par ne rien voir ; et c'est dans 
cette obscurite qu'ils ont place leur Dieu ; e'est dans cet 
abime tenebreux que leur imagination inquiete travaille 
toujours a se fabriquer des chimeres, qui les affiigeront 
jusqu'a ce que la connoissance de la nature les de- 
trompe des fantomes qu'ils ont toujours si vainement 
adores. 

Si nousvoulons nous rendre compte de nosidees sur 
la Divinite, nous serons obliges de convenir que, par le 
mot Dieu, les hommes n'ont jamais pu designer que 
la cause la plus cach£e, la plus eloignee, la plus incon- 
nue des effets qu'ils voyoient : ils ne font usage de ce 
mot, que lorsque le jeu des causes naturelles et con- 
nues cesse d'etre visible pour eux ; des qu'ils perdent le 
fil de ces causes, ou des que leur esprit ne peut plus en 
suivre la chaine, ils tranchent leur difficult!, et ter- 
minent leurs recherches en appellant Dieu la derniere 
des causes, e'est-a-dire celle qui est au-dela de toutes 
les causes qu'ils connoissent ; ainsi ils ne font qu'assigner 
une denomination vague a une cause ignoree, a laquelle 
leur paresse on les bornes de leurs connoissances les 
forcent de s'arr£ter. Toutes les fois qu'on nous ditque 
Dieu est l'auteur de quelque phenomene, cela signifie 
qu'on ignore comment un tel phenomene a pu s'operer 
par le secours des forces ou des causes que nous con- 
noissons dans la nature. C'est ainsi que le commun 
des hommes, dont l'ignorance est le partage, attribue a 
la Divinite non seulement les effets inusites qui les 
frappent, mais encore les evenemens les plus simples, 
dont les causes sont les plus faciles a connoitre pour 
quiconque a pu les mediter. En un mot, l'homme a 
toujours respecte les causes inconnues des effets surpre- 
nans, que son ignorance l'emp£choit de d^ineler. Ce 
fut sur les debris de la nature que les hommes ele- 
vt*rent le colosse imaginaire de la Divinite. 

Si l'ignorance de la nature donna la naissance aux 
dieux, la connoissance de la nature est faite pour les 
detruire. A mesure que l'liomme s'iustruit, ses forces 
et ses ressources augmentent avec ses lumieres ; les 
sciences, les arts conservateurs, l'industrie, lui four- 
nissent des secours ; l'cxperience le rassure ou lui 
procure des moyens de resister aux efforts de bien des 
causes qui cessent de l'alarmer des qu'il les a connucs. 
En un mot, ses terreurs se dissipent dans la meme 
proportion que son esprit s'eclaire. L'homme instruit 
cesse d'etre superstitieux. 

Ce n'est jamais que sur parole que des peuples 
cntiers adorent le Dieu de leurs peres et de leurs 
prelres : l'autorite, la confiance, la soumission, et 
l'habitude, leur tiennent lieu de conviction et de 
preuves ; ils se prosternent et prient, parce que leurs 
peres leur ont appris a se prosterner et prior : mais 
pourquoi ccux-ci se sont-ils mis a genoux ? C'est que 
dans les temps eloignes leurs legislateurs et leurs guides 
leur en ont fait un devoir. " Adorez et croyez," ont- 



ils dit, " des dieux que vous ne pouvez coinprendrc ; 
rapportez-vous-en a notrc sagesse profonde ; nous en 
savons plus que vous sur la Divinite." Mais pourquoi 
mYn rapporterois-je ;i vous? C'est que Dieu le veut 
ainsi, c'est que Dieu vous punira si vous OMB resister. 
Mais ce Dieu n'est-il done pas la chose en question ? 
Cependant les hommes se sont toujours payes de ce 
cercle vicieux ; la paresse de leur esprit leur fit trouver 
plus court de s'en rapporter au jugement des autres. 
Toutes les notions religieusessont fondees uniquement 
sur 1'autorit.e ; toutes les religions du niondc defendent 
l'cxainen, et ne veulent pas que Ton raisonne; c'est 
l'autorite qui veut qu'on croie en Dieu ; ce Dieu n'est 
lui-meme fonde que sur l'autorite de quelques hommes 
qui pretendent le connoitre, et venir de sa part pour 
l'annoncer a la terre. Un Dieu fait par les hommes, 
a sans doute besoin des hommes pour se faire connoitre 
aux hommes. 

Ne seroit-ce done que pour des pr6tres, des inspires, 
des metaphysiciens, que seroit reservee la conviction de 
l'existence d'un Dieu, que Ton dit neanmoins si neces- 
saire a tout le genre humain ? Mais trouvons-nous de 
1 'harmonic entre les opinions theologiques desdifferens 
inspires, ou des penseurs repandus sur la terre? Ceux 
m6me qui font profession d'adorer le m£me Dieu, 
sont-ils d'accord sur son compte ? Sont-ils contents 
des preuves que leurs collegues apportent de son exis- 
tence ? Souscrivent-ils unanimement aux idees qu'ils 
presentent sur sa nature, sur sa conduite, sur la facon 
d'entendre ses pretendus oracles ? Est-il une contree 
sur la terre, oil la science de Dieu se soit reellement 
perfectionnee ? A-t-elle pris quelque part la consis- 
tance et l'uniformite que nous voyons prendre aux 
connoissances humaines, aux arts les plus futiles, aux 
metiers les plus meprises? Des mots d' esprit, d'im- 
materialite, de creation, de predestination, de grace; 
cette foule de distinctions subtiles dont la theologie 
s'est partout remplie dans quelques pays, ces inventions 
si ingenieuses, imaginees par des penseurs qui se soLt 
succedes depuis tant de siecles, n'ont fait, helas ! 
qu'embrouiller les choses, et jamais la science la 
plus necessaire aux hommes n'a jusqu'ici pu acquerir 
la moindre fixite. Depuis des milliers d'annees, ces 
re^veurs oisifs se sont perp^tuellement relayes pour 
mediter la Divinite, pour deviner ses vores cachees, 
pour inventer des hypotheses propres a developper 
cette enigme importante. Leur peu de succes n'a 
point decourage la vanite theologique ; toujours on a 
parle de Dieu : on s'est tigorge pour lui, et cet 6tre 
sublime demeure toujours le plus ignore et le plus 
discute. 

Les hommes auroient et£ trop heureux, si, se bornant 
aux objets visibles qui les interessent, ils eussent em- 
ploye, a perfection ner leurs sciences reelles, leurs lois, 
leur morale, leur education, la moitie des efforts qu'ils 
ont mis dans leurs recherches sur la Divinite. Ils 
auroient ete bien plus sages encore, et plus fortunes, 
s'ils eussentpuconsentir a laisser leurs guides desceuvres 
se quereller entre eux, et sonder des profondeurs capa- 
bles de les etourdir, sans se m6ler de leurs disputes 
iusensees. Mais il est de l'essence de l'ignorance 
d'attacher de l'importance a. ce qu'elle ne comprend 
pas. La vanite humaine fait que l'esprit se roidit 
contrc les difficultes. Plus un objet se derobe a nos 
yeux, plus nous faisons d'efforts pour lesaisir, parceque 
des-lors il aiguillonnc notre orgueil, il excite none 
curiosite, il nous parott interessant. En combattant 
pour son Dieu chacun ne combattit en effet que pour 
les interims de sa propre vanite, qui de toutes les pas- 
sions pioduitcs par la mal-organisation de la societe, est 






! I.N MAI',. 



darner, et la plus proprei produira 

•: moment K 

rnd'an Dieu eeprideux, deal les 

lues d^cident du s>>rt dea 

hu—lni. nnm m vealeaa im mi youx que ear la 

r&endue que ton* lea bemaaea, ne£ma an tram- 
Mam in oeordent u lui donner ; si 

nous lui eapajoeoaa la ptojet qu'aa lui pivto. da n 'avoir 

que poor ta prapro glaira ; d'axigar les bum- 
mages des Htm intelligeai ; da no cMreher dans ses 

|W la btan tea du genra hamaia ; ceanmaat 
ooociliei ^positions avec 1'ignorance 

vr.iimcnt invincible dans laqncllc ce Dieu, si glorieux 
tt si bon, laissc la plupart iles homines sur son compte ? 
Si l>ieu vi-ut etre conmi, cheri, remercie, que ne se 
montre-t-il sous dos traits favorables a. tons ecs 6tres 

as dont il vcut 6tre aime ct adore ? Pourquoi 

Be point se manifester a touto la tone d'une facon non 

equivoque, bien plus capable de nous convaincre, que 

lulieics qui seuiblent accuser la 

Divinite d'une partialite fachcuse pour quelques-unes 

matures? Le Tout-Puissant n'auroit-il done 
pas des m ovens plus convainquans de se montrer aux 
hommes que ces metamorphoses ridicules, ces incar- 
nations pretendues, qui nous sont attestees par des 
OVrivains si pcu d'accord entrc eux dans les recits 
qu'ils en font ? Au lieu de tant de miracles inventes 
pour prouvcr la mission divine de tant de legislateurs 

par les differens peuples du monde, le souverain 
des espritsne pouvoit-il pas convaincre tout d'un coup 
Vespiit humain des cboses qu'il a voulu lui faire 
connoitre ? Au lieu de suspendre un soleil dans la 
voute du firmament ; au lieu de repandre sans ordre 
les etoiles et les constellations qui remplissent l'espace, 
n'eut-il pas ete plus conforme aux vues d'un Dieu 
jaloux de sa gloire et sibien-intentionnepourl'homme, 
d'ecrire d'une facon non sujette a dispute, son nom, 
ses attributs, ses volontes permanentes, en earacteres 
inefFacablcs, et lisibles 6galement pour tous les babitans 
de la terre? Personne alors n'auroit pu douter de 
l'existence d'un Dieu, de ses volontes claires, de ses 
intentions visibles. Sous les yeux de ce Dieu si terri- 
ble personne n'auroit eu l'audace de violer ses ordon- 
uances ; nul mortel n'eut eu le front d'en imposer en 
6on nom, ou d'interpreter ses volontes suivant ses pro- 
pres fantaisies. 

En effet, quand m6me on admettroit l'existence du 
Dieu theologique, et la realite des attributs si discor- 
dans qu'on lui donne, 1'on ue peut en rien conclure, 
pour autoriser la conduite ou les cultes qu'on prescrit 
de lui rendre. La theologie est vraiment le tonneau 
des Dana'ides. A force de qualites contradictoires et 
d'assertions hasardees, elle a, pourainsi dire, tellement 
garrotte son Di^u qu'elle l'a mis dans l'impossibilite 
d'agir. S'il est Mfiuiment bon, quelle raison aurions- 
nous de le craindre ? S'il est infiniuient sage, de quoi 
nous inquieter sur notre sort ? S'il sait tout, pourquoi 
l'avertir de nos besoins, et le fatiguer de nos prieres? 
S'il est partout, pourquoi lui eleverdes temples ? S'il 
est maitre de tout, pourquoi lui faire des sacrifices et 
des offirandes? S'il est juste, comment croire qu'il 
punisse des creatures qu'il a remplies de foiblesses? Si 
la grace fait tout en elles, qu'elle raison auroit-il de les 
recompenser ? S'il est tout-puissant, comment l'offen- 
ser, comment lui resister ? S'il est raisonnable, com- 
ment se mettroit-il en colore contre des aveugles, a 
qui il a laisse la liberie de deraisonner ! S'il est im- 
u liable, de quel droit pretendrions-nous faire cbauger 
tc» dcvieta ? S'il est inconcevable, pourquoi nous en 



OaeOpai ? S'lL A PARLE', rOURQOOI L'UNIVERS N'Est-IL 

mnii { Si la mnnainnanrifi d'un Dieu est la 

plus nfeww*i pourquai n'cst-ellr pns la ])lus evidente, 
et la plus rlaire? — Systemc de la Nature. London, 
1781. 

Tbe enligbtened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly 
profeaaaa himself an atheist : — Quaproptcr effigiem 
Dei, fonnamque quacrere, imbccillitatis human* reor. 
Quisquis est Deua (si modo est alius) et quacunque in 
parte] totus est 6ensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, 
totus animaj, totus animi, totus sui. * * * * 
Imperfecta vero in homine nature; praecipua solatia ne 
deuni quidem posse omnia. Namque uec sibi potest 
mortem consciscere, si velit, quodhomini dedit optimum 
in tantis vita poenis : nee mortalee sternitate donare, 
aut revocare defunctos ; nee facere ut qui vixit non 
vixerit, qui honores gessit non gesserit, nullumque ha- 
bere in prseteritum jus, praeterquam oblivionis,(atque ut 
facetis quoque argumentis societas haec cum deo copule- 
tur.) ut bis dena viginta non sint, et multa similiter 
efficere non posse. — Per quae, declaratur baud dubie, 
naturae potentiam id quoque esse, quod Deum vocamus. 
— Plin. Nat. Hist. cap. de Deo. 

The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. 
See Sir W. Drummono's Academical Questions, 
chap. iii. — Sir W. seems to consider the atheism, to 
which it leads, as a sufficient presumption of the false- 
hood of the system of gravitation : but surely it is more 
consistent with the good faith of philosophy to admit a 
deduction from facts than an hypothesis incapable of 
proof, although it might militate with the obstinate 
preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead 
of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, 
demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have 
been more suited to the modesty of the sceptic and the 
toleration of the philosopher. ^^ 

Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt : imo, quia 
naturae potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia, autem 
est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non intelligere, quatenus 
causas naturales ignoramus ; adeoque stulte ad eandem 
Dei potentiam recurritnr, quando rei alicujus, causam 
naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei potentiam ignoramus. — 
Spinosa, Tract. Theologico-Pol. chap. i. page 14. 

P. 14, col.], 1.6. 
Ahasuerus, rise 1 

"Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave 
of Mount Carmel. Near two thousand years have 
elapsed since he was first goaded by never-ending rest- 
lessness to rove the globe from poleto pole. When our 
Loid was wearied with the burthen of his ponderous 
cross, and wanted to rest before the door of Ahasuerus, 
the unfeeling wretch drove him away with brutality. 
The saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the 
heavy load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of 
death appeared before Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indig- 
nantly, ' Barbarian ! thou hast denied rest to the Son 
of Man ; be it denied thee also, until he comes to judge 
the world.' 

" A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, 
goads him now from country to country : he is denied 
the consolation which death affords, and precluded 
from the rest of the peaceful grave. 

" Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount 
Carmel — he shook the dust from his beard — and taking 
up one of the sculls heaped there, hurled it down the 
eminence : it rebjunded from the earth in shivered 
atoms. ' This was my father!' roared Ahasuerus. Seven 



NOTES ON QUEEN MA13. 



29 



more sculls rolled down from rock to rock ; while the 
infuriate Jew. following them wilh ghastly looks, ex- 
claimed — 'And these wt-rc my wives T 1 ft- still continued 
to hurl down scull after scull, roaring in dreadful 
accents — 'And these, and these, and these were my 
children ! They could die ; hut I ! reprobate wretch, 
alas ! I cannot die ! Dreadful beyond conception is 
the judgment that hangs over me. Jerusalem fell — I 
crushed the sucking-babe, and precipitated myself into 
the destructive flames. loused the Romans — but, alas! 
alas ! the restless curse held me by the hair, — and I 
could not die ! 

" 'Rome the giantess fell — I placed myself before the 
falling statue — she fell, and did not crush me. Nations 
sprang up and disappeared before me ; but I remained, 
and did not die. From cloud-eucircled cliffs did I 
precipitate myself into the ocean ; but the foaming 
billows cast me upon the shore, and the burning arrow 
of existence pierced my cold heart again. I leaped into 
Etna's flaming abyss, and roared with the giants for ten 
long months, polluting with my groans the mount's 
sulphureous mouth — ah! ten long months. The volcano 
fermented, and in a fiery stream of lava cast me up. I 
lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell amid the glowing 
cinders, and yet continued to exist. — A forest was on 
fire : I darted, on wings of fury and despair, into the 
crackling wood. Fire dropped upon me from the trees, 
but the flames only singed my limbs ; alas ! it could not 
consume them. — 1 now mixed with the butchers of 
mankind, and plunged in the tempest of the raging- 
battle. 1 roared defiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance 
to the victorious German ; but arrows and spears 
rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen's 
flaming sword broke upon my scull: balls in vain 
hissed upon me : the lightnings of battle glared harmless 
around my loins : in vain did the elephant trample on 
me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed ! The 
mine, big with destructive power, burst under me, and 
hurled me high in the air— I fell on heaps of smoking 
limbs, but was only singed. The giant's steel club re- 
bounded from my body : the executioner's hand could 
not strangle me, the tiger's tooth could not pierce me, 
nor would the hungry lion in the circus devour me. I 
cohabited with poisonous snakes, and pinched the red 
crest of the dragon. The serpent stung, but could not 
destroy me. The dragon tormented, but dared not to 
devour me. — I now provoked the fury of tyrants : I 
said to Nero, Thou art a bloodhound ! I said to Chris- 
tiern, Thou art a bloodhound ! I said to Muley Ismail, 
Thou art a bloodhound ! The tyrants invented cruel 

torments, but did not kill me. Ha ! not to be 

able to die — not to be able to die, not to be permitted 
to rest after the toils of life — to be doomed to be im- 
prisoned forever in this clay-formed dungeon — to be 
forever clogged with this worthless body, its load of 
diseases and infirmities — to be condemned to hold for 
millenniums that yawning monster Sameness, and Time, 
that hungry hyena, ever bearing children, and ever de- 
vouring again her offspring ! — Ha ! not to be permitted 
to die ! Awful avenger in heaven, hast thou in thine 
armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful ? then 
let it thunder upon me, command a hurricane to sweep 
me down to the foot of Carmel, that I there may lie 
extended ; may pant, and writhe, and die V " 

This fragment is the translation of part of some 
German work, whose title I have vainly endeavoured 
to discover. I picked it up, dirty and torn, some years 
ago, in Lincoln's-Inn Fields. 



P. 14, col. 1, 1. 13. 
/ irill bcfjet a ton, and he shall bear 

The sins of all tlte world. 

A book is put into our hands when children, called 
the Bihle, the purport of whose history is briefly this : 
That God made the earth in six days, and there planted 
a delightful garden, in which lie placed the first paii 
of human beings. In the midst of the garden he planted 
a tree, whose fruit, although within their reach, they 
were forbidden to touch. That the Devil, in the shape 
of a snake, persuaded them to eat of this fruit ; in con- 
sequence of which God condemned both them and their 
posterity yet unborn, to satisfy his justice by their 
eternal misery. That, four thousand years after these 
events (the human race in the meanwhile having gone 
unredeemed to perdition), God engendered with the 
betrothed wife of a carpenter in Judea (whose virginity 
was nevertheless uninjured), and begat a Son, whose 
name was Je6us Christ ; and who was crucified and 
died, in order that no more men might be devoted to 
hell-fire, he bearing the burthen of his Father's dis- 
pleasure by proxy. The book states, in addition, that 
the soul of whoever disbelieves this sacrifice will be 
burned with everlasting fire. 

During many ages of misery and darkness this story 
gained implicit belief; but at length men arose who 
suspected that it was a fable and imposture, and that 
Jesus Christ, so far from being a God, was only a man 
like themselves. But a numerous set of men, who 
derived and still derive immense emoluments from this 
opinion, in the shape of a popular belief, told the 
vulgar, that, if they did not believe in the Bible, they 
would be damned to all eternity ; and burned, im- 
prisoned, and poisoned all the unbiassed and uncon 
nected inquirers who occasionally arose. They still 
oppress them, so far as the people, now become more 
enlightened, will allow. 

The belief in all that the Bible contains, is called 
Christianity. A Roman governor of Judea, at the 
instances of a priest-led mob, crucified a man called 
Jesus eighteen centuries ago. He was a man of pure 
life, who desired to rescue his countrymen from the 
tyranny of their barbarous and degrading superstitions. 
The common fate of all who desire to benefit mankind 
awaited him. The rabble, at the instigation of the 
priests, demanded his death, although his very judge 
made public acknowledgment of his innocence. Jesus 
was sacrificed to the honour of that God with whom 
he was afterwards confounded. It is of importance, 
therefore, to distinguish between the pretended cha- 
racter of this being as the son of God and the Saviour 
of the world, and his real character as a man, who, for 
a vain attempt to reform the world, paid the forfeit of 
his life to that overbearing tyranny which has since so 
longdesolated the universe in his name. Whilst the one 
is a hypocritical demon, who announces himself as the 
God of compassion and peace, even whilst he stretches 
forth his blood-red hand with the sword of discord to 
waste the earth, having confessedly devised this scheme 
of desolation from eternity ; the other stands in the 
foremost list of those true heroes, who have died in 
the glorious martyrdom of liberty, and have braved 
torture, contempt, and poverty, in the cause of suffer- 
ing humanity.* 

The vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded that 
the crucifixion of Jesus was a supernatural event. 

* Since writing this note, 1 have seen reason to suspect 
that Jesus was an ambitious man, who aspired to tin- 
throne of Judea. 



so 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



Testimonies of miracles, so frequent in unenlightened 
MMi were not wanting to prove that lie was something 
olivine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, 
met with the reveries of Plato and the reasonings of 
Aristotle, and acquired force and extent, until the 
divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to dispute was 
death, which to doubt was infamy. 

Christianity is now the established religion; he who 
attempts to impugn it, must be contented to behold 
murderers and traitors take precedence of him in 
public opinion : though, if his genius be equal to his 
courage, and assisted by a peculiar coalition of circum- 
stances, future ages may exalt him to a divinity, and 
persecute others in his name, as he was persecuted 
in the name of his predecessors in the homage of the 
world. 

The same means that have supported every other 
popular belief, have supported Christianity. War, 
imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood ; deeds of 
unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it 
what it is. The blood shed by the votaries of the God 
of mercy and peace, since the establishment of his 
religion, would probably suffice to drown all other 
sectaries now on the habitable globe. We derive from 
our ancestors a faith thus fostered and supported : we 
quarrel, persecute, and hate, for its maintenance. Even 
under a government which, whilst it infringes the very 
right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the 
liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and imprisoned 
because he is a deist, and no one raises his voice in the 
indignation of outraged humanity. But it is ever a 
proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those 
who use coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admis- 
sion : and a dispassionate observer would feel himself 
more powerfully interested in favour of a man, who 
depending on the truth of his opinions, simply stated 
his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his 
aggressor, who, daringly avowing his unwillingness or 
incapacity to answer them by argument, proceeded to 
repress the energies and break the spirit of their pro- 
mulgator by that torture and imprisonment whose in- 
fliction he could command. 

Analogy seems to favour the opinion, that as, like 
other systems, Christianity has arisen and augmented, 
so like them it will decay and perish ; that, as violence, 
darkness, and deceit, not reasoning and persuasion, have 
procured its admission among mankind, so, when en- 
thusiasm has subsided, and time, that infallible con- 
troverter of false opinions, has involved its pretended 
evidences in the darkness of antiquity, it will become 
obsolete; that Milton's poem alone will give permanency 
to the remembrance of its absurdities ; and that men 
will laugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemption, and 
original sin, as they now do at the metamorphoses of 
Jupiter, the miracles of Romish saints, the efficacy of 
witchcraft, and the appearance of departed spirits. 

Had the Christian religion commenced and continued 
by the mere force of reasoning and persuasion, the 
preceding analogy would be inadmissible. We should 
never speculate on the future obsoleteness of a system 
perfectly conformable to nature and reason ; it would 
endure so long as they endured ; it would be a truth 
as indisputable as the light of the sun, the criminality 
of murder, and other facts, whose evidence, depending 
on our organisation and relative situations, must re- 
main acknowledged as satisfactory so long as man is 
man. It is an incontrovertible fact, the consideration 
of which ought to repress the hasty conclusions of 
credulity, or moderate its obstinacy in maintaining 
them, that, had the Jews not been a fanatical race of 



men, had even the resolution of Pontius Pilate been 
equal to his candour, the Christian religion never 
could have prevailed, it could not even have existed : 
on so feeble a thread hangs the most cherished opinion 
of a sixth of the human race ! When will the vulgar 
learn humility ? When will the pride of ignorance 
blush at having believed before it could compre- 
hend ? 

Either the Christian religion is true, or it is false ; 
if true, it comes from Cod, and its authenticity can 
admit of doubt and dispute no further than its omni- 
potent author is willing to allow. Either the power 
or the goodness of God is called in question, if he leaves 
those doctrines most essential to the well-being of man 
in doubt and dispute; the only ones which, since their 
promulgation, have been the subject of unceasing cavil, 
the cause of irreconcileable hatred. // God has 
spoken, why is the universe not convinced ? 

There is this passage in the Christian Scriptures : 
"Those who obey not God, and believe not the Gospel 
of his Son, shall be punished with everlasting destruc- 
tion." This is the pivot upon which all religions turn : 
they all assume that it is in our power to believe or 
not to believe ; whereas the mind can only believe that 
which it thinks true. A human being can only be 
supposed accountable for those actions which are in- 
fluenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct 
from and unconnected with volition : it is the appre- 
hension of the agreement or disagreement of the ideas 
that compose any proposition. Belief is a passion, or 
involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other 
passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate to the 
degrees of excitement. Volition is essential to merit 
or demerit. But the Christian religion attaches the 
highest possible degrees of merit and demerit to that 
which is worthy of neither, and which is totally un- 
connected with the peculiar faculty of the mind, whose 
presence is essential to their being. 

Christianity was intended to reform the world : had 
an all-wise Being planned it, nothing is more impro- 
bable than that it should have failed : omniscience 
would infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme 
which experience demonstrates, to this age, to have 
been utterly unsuccessful. 

Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating 
the Deity. Prayer may be considered under two 
points of view ; as an endeavour to change the inten- 
tions of God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. 
But the former case supposes that the caprices of a 
limited intelligence can occasionally instruct the Creator 
of the world how to regulate the universe ; and the 
latter, a certain degree of servility analogous to the 
loyalty demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedience 
indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him 
who thinks that he can do something better than 
reason. 

Christianity, like all other religions, rests upon 
miracles, prophecies, and martyrdoms. No religion 
ever existed, which had not its prophets, its attested 
miracles, and above all, crowds of devotees who would 
bear patiently the most horrible tortures to prove its 
authenticity. It should appear that in no case can a 
discriminating mind subscribe to the genuineness of a 
miracle. A miracle is an infraction of nature's law, 
by a supernatural cause ; by a cause acting beyond 
that eternal circle within which all things are included. 
God breaks through the law of nature, that he may 
convince mankind of the truth of that revelation, which, 
in spite of his precautions, has been, since its introduc 
tion, the subject of unceasing schism and cavil. 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



•M 



Miracles resolve themselves into the following ques- 
tion : * — Whether it is more probable the laws of 
nature, hitherto so immutably harmonious, should have 
undergone violation, or that a man should have told a 
lie ? Whether it is more probabie that we are ignorant 
of the natural cause of an event, or that we know the 
supernatural one ? That, in old times, when the powers 
of nature were less known than at present, a certain 
6et of men were themselves deceived, or had some 
hidden motive for deceiving others ; or that God begat 
a son, who, in his legislation, measuring merit by belief, 
evidenced himself to be totally ignorant of the powers 
of the human mind — of what is voluntary, and what 
is the contrary ? 

We have many instances of men telling lies ; — none 
of an infraction of nature's laws, those laws of whose 
government alone we have any knowledge or expe- 
rience. The records of all nations afford innumerable 
instances of men deceiving others either from vanity or 
interest, or themselves being deceived by the limitedness 
of their views and their ignorance of natural causes ; 
but where is the accredited case of God having come 
upon earth to give the lie to his own creations? There 
would be something truly wonderful in the appearance 
of a ghost ; but the assertion of a child that he saw one 
as he passed through the church-yard is universally ad- 
mitted to be less miraculous. 

But even supposing that a man should raise a dead 
body to life before your eyes, and on this fact rest 
his claim to being considered the son of God ; — the 
Humane Society restores drowned persons, and as it 
makes no mystery of the method it employs, its mem- 
bers are not mistaken for the sons of God. All that we 
have aright to infer from our ignorance of the cause 
of any event is, that we do not know it : had the Mexi- 
cans attended to this simple rule when they heard the 
cannon of the Spaniards, they would not have considered 
them as gods : the experiments of modern chemistry 
would have defied the wisest philosophers of ancient 
Greece and Rome to have accounted for them on 
natural principles. An author of strong common 
sense has observed, that " a miracle is no miracle at 
second-hand ; " he might have added, that a miracle is 
no miracle in any case ; for until we are acquainted 
with all natural causes, we have no reason to imagine 
others. 

There remains to be considered another proof of 
Christianity — prophecy. A book is written before a 
certain event, in which this event is foretold ; how 
could the prophet have foreknown it without inspira- 
tion ? how could he have been inspired without God ? 
The greatest stress is laid on the prophecies of Moses 
and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and that of 
Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. The 
prophecy of Moses is a collection of every possible 
cursing and blessing, and it is so far from being mar- 
vellous that the one of dispei'sion should have been ful- 
filled, that it would have been more surprising if, out 
of all these, none should have taken effect. In Deu- 
teronomy, chap, xxviii, ver. 64, where Moses explicitly 
foretells the dispersion, he states that they shall there 
serve gods of wood and stone : " And the Lord shall 
scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the 
earth even to the other, and there thou shalt serve 
other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have 
known, even gods of wood and stone." The Jews 
are at this day remarkably tenacious of their religion. 
Moses also declares that they shall be subjected to these 
curses for disobedience to his ritual: ''Audit shall 



* See Hume's Essays, vol. ii., page 121. 



come to pass, if thou will not hearken unto the voice of 
the Lord thy God, to observe to do all the command- 
ments and statutes which I command you this day, 
that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake 
thee." Is this the real reason ? The third, fourth, and 
fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest confes- 
sion. The indelicate type might apply in a hundred 
senses to a hundred things. The fifty-third chapter 
of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed in 
clearness the oracles of Delphos. The historical proof, 
that Moses, Isaiah and Hosea did write when they are 
said to have written, is far from being clear and circum- 
stantial. 

But prophecy requires proof in its character as a 
miracle ; we have no right to suppose that a man fore- 
knew future events from God, until it is demonstrated 
that he neither could know them by his own exertion?, 
nor that the writings which contain the prediction could 
possibly have been fabricated after the event pretended 
to be foretold. It is more probable that writings, 
pretending to divine inspiration, should have been 
fabricated after the fulfilment of their pretended pre- 
diction, than that they should have really been divinely 
inspired ; when we consider that the latter supposition 
makes God at once the creator of the human mind and 
ignorant of its primary powers, particularly as we have 
numberless instances of false religions, and forged pro- 
phecies of things long past, and no accredited case of 
God having conversed with men directly or indirectly. 
It is also possible that the description of an event might 
have foregone its occurrence ; but this is far from being 
a legitimate proof of a divine revelation, as many men, 
not pretending to the character of a prophet, have 
nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied. 

Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, 
even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable pre- 
diction : — "The despotic government of France is 
screwed up to the highest pitch ; a revolution is fast 
approaching ; that revolution, I am convinced, will be 
radical and sanguinary." This appeared in the letters 
of the prophet long before the accomplishment of this 
wonderful prediction. Now, have these particulars 
come to pass, or have they not ? If they have, how 
could the earl have foreknown them without inspira- 
tion ? If we admit the truth of the Christian religion 
on testimony such as this, we must admit, on the same 
strength of evidence, that God has affixed the highest 
rewards to belief, and the eternal tortures of the never- 
dying worm to disbelief; both of which have been 
demonstrated to be involuntary. 

The last proof of the Christian religion depends on 
the influence of the Holy Ghost. Theologians divide 
the influence of the Holy Ghost into its ordinary and 
extraordinary modes of operation. The latter is sup- 
posed to be that which inspired the prophets and 
apostles ; and the former to be the grace of God, 
which summarily makes known the truth of his reve- 
lation, to those whose minds are fitted for its reception 
by a submissive perusal of his word. Persons con- 
vinced in this manner, can do anything but account 
for their conviction, describe the time at which it hap- 
pened, or the manner in which it came upon them. 
It is supposed to enter the mind by other channels 
than those of the senses, and therefore professes to be 
superior to reason founded on their experience. 

Admitting, however, the usefulness or possibility of 
a divine revelation, unless we demolish the foundations 
of all human knowledge, it is requisite that our reason 
should previously demonstrate its genuineness ; for, 
before we extinguish the steady ray of reason and 



32 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB 



common sense, it is fit that we should discover whether 
we cannot do without their assistance, whether or no 
then be any other which may suffice to guide us 
through the labyrinth of life : * for, if a man is to be 
inspired upon all occasions, if he is to he sure of a 
thing because he is sure, if the ordinary operations of 
the spirit are not to be considered very extraordinary 
modes of demonstration, if enthusiasm is to usurp the 
place of proof, and madness that of sanity, all reasoning 
is superfluous. The Mahometan dies fighting for his 
prophet, the Indian immolates himself at the chariot- 
wheels of Brahma, the Hottentot worships an insect, 
the Negro a bunch of feathers, the Mexican sacrifices 
humau victims ! Their degree of conviction mu6t cer- 
tainly be very strong : it cannot arise from conviction, 
it must from feelings, the reward of their prayers. If 
each of these should affirm, in opposition to the 
strongest possible arguments, that inspiration carried 
internal evidence, I fear their inspired brethren, the 
orthodox missionaries, would be so uncharitable as to 
pronounce them obstinate. 

Miiacles cannot be received as testimonies of a dis- 
puted fact, because all human testimony has ever been 
insufficient to establish the possibility of miracles. 
That, which is incapable of proof itself, is no proof of 
anything else. Prophecy has also been rejected by the 
test of reason. Those, then, who have been actually 
inspired, are the only true believers in the Christian 
religion. 

Mox numine viso 
Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater 
Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu, 
Auctorem paritura suum. Mortalia corda 
Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno 
Pectore, qui totum late compleetitur orbem. 

Claudiani Carmen Paschale. 

Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity 
carry its own infamy and refutation with itself? jg^* 

P. 17, col. 1, 1. 36. 

Him (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, 
Which, from the exhaustless store of human weal 
Dawns on the virtuous mind) the thoughts that rise 
In time-destroying inftniteness, gift 
With self-enshrined eternity, %c. 

Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas 
m our mind. Vivid sensation, of either pain or plea- 
sure, makes the time seem long, as the common phrase 
is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our 
ideas. If a mind be conscious of a hundred ideas during 
one minute by the clock, and of two hundred during 
another, the latter of these spaces would actually oc- 
cupy so much greater extent in the mind as two exceed 
one in quantity. If, therefore, the human mind, by 
any future improvement of its sensibility, should be- 
come conscious of an infinite number of ideas in a 
minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not 
hence infer that the actual space between the birth and 
death of a man will ever be prolonged ; but that his 
sensibility is perfectible, and that the number of ideas 
wdrich his mind is capable of receiving is indefinite. One 
man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours, 
another sleeps soundly in his bed : the difference of 
time perceived by these two persons is immense ; one 
hardly will believe that half-an-hour has elapsed, the 
other could credit that centuries had flown during his 
agony. Thus the life of a man of virtue and talent, 



* See Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, 
book iv. chap. xix. on Enthusiasm. 



who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard 
to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable 
priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dul- 
ness. The one has perpetually cultivated his "mental 
faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, 
can abstract and generalise amid the lethargy of every- 
day business ; — the other can slumber over the bright- 
est moments of his being, and is unable to remember 
the happiest hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing 
ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise. 

Dark flood of time ! 
Roll as it listeth thee — I measure not. 
By months or moments thy ambiguous course. 
Another may stand by me on the brink, 
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken 
That pauses at my feet. The sense of love, 
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought, 
Prolong my being : if I wake no more, 
My life more actual living will contain 
Than some grey veterans' of the world's cold school, 
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll, 
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. 

See Godwin's Pol. Just. vol. i. page 411; and 
Condorcet, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique 
des Pr ogres de V Esprit Ilumain, ipoque ix 

P. 17, col. 1.1.44. 

No longer now 
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face. 

I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral 
nature of man originated in his unnatural habits of life. 
The origin of man, like that of the universe of which 
he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable mystery. 
His generations either had a beginning, or they had 
not. The weight of evidence in favour of each of these 
suppositions seems tolerably equal ; and it is perfectly 
unimportant to the present argument which is assumed. 
The language spoken, however, by the mythology of 
nearly all religions seems to prove, that at some distant 
period man forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed 
the purity and happiness of his being to unnatural 
appetites. The date of this event seems to have also 
been that of some great change in the climates of the 
earth, with which it has an obvious correspondence. 
The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of 
evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of 
God and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other 
explanation than the disease and crime that have flowed 
from unnatural diet. Milton was so well aware of 
this, that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the 
consequence of his disobedience. 

, Immediately a place 

Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark 
A lazar-house it seemed, wherein were laid ; 
Numbers of all diseased, all maladies 
Of ghastly spasm or racking torture, qualms 
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, 
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, 
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, 
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, 
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, 
Marasmus, and wide- wasting pestilence, 
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rhemns. 

— And how many thousands more might not be added 
to this frightful catalogue ! 

The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, al- 
though universally admitted to be allegorical, has never 
been satisfactorily explained. Prometheus stole fire 
from heaven, and was chained for this crime to Mount 
Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his 
liver, that grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says, that 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



33 



before the time of Prometheus, mankind were exempt 
from suffering; that they enjoyed a vigorous youth, 
and that death, when at length it came, approached 
like sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so 
general was this opinion, that Horace, a poet of the 
Augustan age, writes — 

Audax omnia perpeti, 
Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas. 

Audax Iapeti genus 
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit : 

Post ignem aetheria domo 
Subductum, macies et nova febrium 

Terris incubuit cohors, 
Semotique prius tarda necessitas 

Lethi corripuit gradum. 

How plain a language is spoken by all this ! Prome- 
theus (who represents the human race) effected some 
great change in the condition of his nature, and applied 
fire to culinary purposes ; thus inventing an expedient 
for screening from his disgust the horrors of the sham- 
bles. From this moment his vitals were devoured by 
the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every 
shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing 
the soul- quelling sinkings of premature and violent 
death. All vice arose from the ruin of healthful inno- 
cence. — Tyranny, superstition, commerce, and in- 
equality, were then first known, when reason vainly 
attempted to guide the wanderings of exacerbated pas- 
sion. I conclude this part of the subject with an 
abstract from Mr. Newton's Defence of Vegetable 
Regimen, from whom I have borrowed this interpreta- 
tion of the fable of Prometheus. 

" Making allowance for such transposition of the 
events of the allegory as time might produce after the 
important truths were forgotten, which this portion of 
the ancient mythology was intended to transmit, the 
drift of the fable seems to be this : — Man at his crea- 
tion was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth ; 
that is, he was not formed to be a sickly suffering 
creature as we now see him, but to enjoy health, and 
to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his parent 
earth without disease or pain. Prometheus first taught 
the use of animal food (Primus bovem occidit Prome- 
theus*) and of fire, with which to render it more digest- 
ible and pleasing to the taste. Jupiter, and the rest 
of the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these inven- 
tions, were amused or irritated at the short-sighted 
devices of the newly-formed creature, and left him to 
experience the sad effects of them. Thirst, the neces- 
sary concomitant of a flesh diet, (perhaps of all diet 
vitiated by culinary preparation,) ensued ; water was 
resorted to, and man forfeited the inestimable gift of 
health which he had received from heaven : he became 
diseased, the partaker of a precarious existence, and no 
longer descended slowly to his grave, "f 

But just disease to luxury succeeds; 
And every death its own avenger breeds, 
The fury passions from that blood began, 
And turned on man a fiercer savage — man. 

Man, and the animals whom he has infected with his 
society or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased. 
The wild hog, the mouflon, the bison, and the wolf, 
are perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably die 
either from external violence or natural old age. But 
the domestic hog, the sheep, the cow, and the dog, are 
subject to an incredible variety of distempers; and, like 
the corrupters of their nature, have physicians who thrive 

* Plin. Nat. mst. lib. vii. sect. 57- 
t Return to Nature. Cadell, 181 1. 



upon their miseries. The supereminence of man is 
like Satan's, the supereminence of pain ; and the 
majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and 
crime, have reason to curse the untoward event, that, 
by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised 
him above the level of his fellow-animals. But the 
steps that have been taken are irrevocable. The whole 
of human science is comprised in one question : How 
can the advantages of intellect and civilisation be recon- 
ciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural 
life? How can we take the benefits, and reject the 
evils, of the system which is now interwoven with all 
the fibres of our being ? — I believe that abstinence from 
animal food and spirituous liquors would in a great 
measure capacitate us for the solution of this important 
question. 

It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is 
attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude 
and nature than those which concern diet. The mis- 
takes cherished by society respecting the connexion of 
the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unsatisfied 
celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the premature 
arrival of puberty, necessarily spring : the putrid atmo- 
sphere of crowded cities ; the exhalations of chemical 
processes; the muffling of our bodies in superfluous 
apparel ; the absurd treatment of infants ; — all these, 
and innumerable other causes, contribute their mite to 
the mass of human evil. 

Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles 
frugivorous animals in everything, and carnivorous in 
nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, 
nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre. A 
mandarin te of the first class," with nails two inches long, 
would probably find them alone inefficient to hold even 
a hare. After every subterfuge of gluttony, the bull 
must be degraded into the ox, and the ram into the 
wether, by an unnatural and inhuman operation, that 
the flaccid fibre may offer a fainter resistance to rebel- 
lious nature. It is only by softening and disguising 
dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered 
susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the 
sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite 
intolerable loathing and disgust. Let the advocate of 
animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on 
its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living 
lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its 
vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood ; when 
fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the 
irresistible instinct of nature that would rise in judg- 
ment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such 
work as this. Then, and only, would he be con- 
sistent. 

Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is 
no exception, unless man be one, to the rule of her- 
bivorous animals having cellulated colons. 

The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in 
the order and number of his teeth. The orang- 
outang is the most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, 
all of which are strictly frugivorous. There is no 
other species of animals, which live on different food, 
in which this analogy exists*. In many frugivorous ani- 
mals, the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct 
than those of man. The resemblance also of the 
human stomach to that of the orang-outang, is greater 
than to that of any other animal. 

The intestines are also identical with those of her- 
bivorous animals, which present a larger surface for 
absorption, and have ample and cellulated colons. 

* Guvier, Lef ons d'Anat. Comp. tcm. iii. pages 1 69, 3?3, 
448, 465, 480. Rees's Cyclopaedia, article " Man." 



34 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



The cavum also, though short, is larger than that of 
carnivorous animals ; and even here the orang-outang 
retains its accustomed similarity. 

The structure of the human frame then is that of 
one fitted to a pure vegetable diet in every essential 
particular. It is true, that the reluctance to abstain 
from animal food, in those who have been long accus- 
tomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of 
weak minds, as to be scarcely overcome ; but this is far 
from bringing any argument in its favour. A lamb, 
which was fed for some time on flesh by a ship's crew, 
refused its natural diet at the end of the voyage. 
There are numerous instances of horses, sheep, oxen, 
and even wood-pigeons, having been taught to live upon 
flesh, until they have loathed their natural aliment. 
Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, 
and other fruit, to the flesh of animals ; until, by the 
gradual depravation of the digestive organs the free use 
of vegetables has for a time produced serious inconveni- 
encies \forn time I say, since there never was aniustance 
wherein a change, from spirituous liquors and animal 
food to vegetahles and pure water, has failed ultimately 
to invigorate the body, by rendering its juices bland 
and consentaneous, and to restore to the mind that cheer- 
fulness and elasticity which not one in fifty possesses 
on the present system. A love of strong liquors is also 
with difficulty taught to infants. Almost every one 
remembers the wry faces which the first glass of port 
produced. Unsophisticated instinct is invariahly unerr- 
ing ; but to decide on the fitness of animal food from 
the perverted appetites which its constrained adoption 
produces, is to make the criminal a judge of his own 
cause ; it is even worse ; for it is appealing to the 
infatuated drunkard in a question of the salubrity of 
brandy. 

What is the cause of morbid action in the animal 
system ? Not the air we hreathe, for our fellow- 
denizens of nature breathe the same uninjured; not 
the water we drink, (if remote from the pollutions of 
man and his inventions *,) for the animals drink it 
too ; not the earth we tread upon ; not the unobscured 
sight of glorious nature, in the wood, the field, or the 
expanse of sky and ocean ; nothing that we are or do 
in common with the undiseased inhabitants of the 
forest; but something then wherein we differ from 
them ; our habit of altering our food by fire, so that 
our appetite is no longer a just criterion for the fitness 
of its gratification. Except in children, there remain 
no traces of that instinct which determines, in all other 
animals, what aliment is natural or otherwise ; and so 
perfectly obliterated are they in the reasoning adults 
of our species, that it has become necessary to urge 
considerations drawn from comparative anatomy to 
prove that we are naturally frugivorous. 

Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever 
the cause of disease shall be discovered, the root, from 
which all vice and misery have so long overshadowed 
the globe, will lie bare to the axe. All the exertions 
of man, from that moment, may be considered as tend- 
ing to the clear profit of his species. No sane mind in 
a sane body resolves upon a real crime. It is a man 
of violent passions, blood-shot eyes, and swollen veins, 
that alone can grasp the knife of murder. The system 



* The necessity of resorting to some means of purifying 
water, and the diseases which arise from its adulteration 
in civilised countries, are sufficiently apparent. See Dr. 
Lamhe's Reports on Cancer. I do not assert that the use of 
water is in itself unnatural, but that the unperverted 
palate would swallow no liquid capable of occasioning 
disease. 



of a simple diet promises no Utopian advantages. It 
is no mere reform of legislation, whilst the furious pas- 
sions and evil propensities of the human heart, in which 
it had its origin, are still unassuaged. It strikes at 
the root of all evil, and is an experiment which may be 
tried with success not alone by nations, but by small 
societies, families, and even individuals. In no cases 
has a return to vegetable diet produced the slightest 
injury ; in most it has been attended with changes yto- 
deniahly beneficial. Should ever a physician be born 
with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he 
might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our 
unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher has 
traced all knowledge to sensation. What prolific 
sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetable 
poisons that have been introduced for its extirpation ! 
How many thousands have become murderers and 
robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute and 
abandoned adventurers, from the use of fermented 
liquors ! who, had they slaked their thirst only with 
pure water, would have lived but to diffuse the happi- 
ness of their own unperverted feelings ! How many 
groundless opinions and absurd institutions have re- 
ceived a general sanction from the sottishness and the 
intemperance of individuals ! Who will assert that, had 
the populace of Paris satisfied their hunger at the ever- 
furnished table of vegetable nature, they would have 
lent their brutal suffrage to the proscription-list of Robe- 
spierre ? Could a set of men, whose passions were not 
perverted by unnatural stimuli, look with coolness on 
an auto da fe? Is it to he believed that a being of 
gentle feelings, rising from his meal of roots, would 
take delight in sports of blood ? Was Nero a man of 
temperate life ? Could you read calm health in his 
cheek, flushed with ungovernable propensities of hatred 
for the human race ? Did Muley Ismael's pulse beat 
evenly, was his skin transparent, did his eyes beam with 
healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants, cheerful- 
ness and benignity ? Though history has decided none 
of these questions, a child could not hesitate to answer 
in the negative. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of 
Buonaparte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the 
ceaseless inquietude of his nervous system, speak no 
less plainly the character of his unresting ambition, 
than his murders and his victories. It is impossible, 
had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable 
feeders, that he could have had either the inclination or 
the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons. The 
desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited in the indi- 
vidual, the power to tyrannize would certainly not be 
delegated by a society neither frenzied by inebriation 
nor rendered impotent and irrational by disease. Preg- 
nant indeed with inexhaustible calamity is the renun- 
ciation of instinct, as it concerns our physical nature ; 
arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor reason perhaps suspect, 
the multitudinous sources of disease in civilised life. 
Even common water, thatapparentlyinnoxiouspabulum, 
when corrupted by the filth of populous cities, is a 
deadly and insidious destroyer*. 

There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adop- 
tion of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly 
mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. 
Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease 
into healthfulness, madness in all its hideous variety, 
from the ravings of the fettered maniac to the unac- 
countable irrationalities of ill temper, that make a hell 
of domestic life, into a calm and considerate evenness 
of temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge of 

* Lambe's Reports on Cancer. 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



Ar> 



the future moral reformation of society. On a natural 
system of diet, old age would be our last and our only 
malady ; the term of our existence would be protracted ; 
we should enjoy life, and no longer preclude others 
from the enjoyment of it ; all sensational delights 
would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect ; the 
very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, 
such as we now feel it in some few and favoured 
moments of our youth. By all that is sacred in our 
hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love 
happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable 
system ! Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject 
whose merits an experience of six months would 
set for ever at rest. But it is only among the en- 
lightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of 
appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its 
ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It 
is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, 
to palliate their torments by medicine, than to prevent 
them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are in- 
variably sensual and indocile ; yet I cannot but feel 
myself persuaded that, when the benefits of vegetable 
diet are mathematically proved ; when it is as clear, 
that those who live naturally are exempt from pre- 
mature death, as that one is not nine, the most sottish 
of mankind will feel a preference towards a long and 
tranquil, contrasted with a short and painful, life. On 
the average, out of sixty persons, four die in three 
years. Hopes are entertained that, in April, 1814, 
statement will be given, that sixty persons, all having 
lived more than three years on vegetables and pure 
water, are then in perfect health. More thau two 
years have now elapsed ; not one of them has died ; no 
such example will be found in any sixty persons taken 
at random. Seventeen persons of all ages (the families 
of Dr. Lambe and Mr. Newton) have lived for seven 
years on this diet without a death, and almost with- 
out the slightest illness. Surely when we consider 
that some of these were infants, and one a martyr to 
asthma, now nearly subdued, we may challenge any 
seventeen persons taken at random in this city to 
exhibit a parallel case. Those, who may have been 
excited to question the rectitude of established habits of 
diet by these loose remarks, should consult Mr. New- 
ton's luminous and eloquent essay*. 

When these proofs come fairly before the world, 
and are clearly seen by all who understand arithmetic, 
it is scarcely possible that abstinence from aliment de- 
monstrably pernicious should not become universal. — 
In proportion to the number of proselytes, so will be 
the weight of evidence ; and, when a thousand persons 
can be produced, living on vegetables and distilled water, 
who have to dread no disease but old age, the world 
will be compelled to regard animal flesh and fermented 
liquors as slow but certain poisons. The change which 
would be produced by simpler habits on political econo- 
my is sufficiently remarkable. The monopolizing eater 
of animal flesh would no longer destroy his constitution 
by devouring an acre at a meal, and many loaves of 
bread would cease to contribute to gout, madness, and 
apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of porter, or a dram 
of gin, when appeasing the long-protracted famine of 
the hard-working peasant's hungry babes. The quan- 
tity of nutritious vegetable matter, consumed in fatten- 
ing the carcase of an ox, would afford ten times the 
sustenance, undepraving indeed, and incapable of gene- 
rating disease, if gathered immediately from the bosom 
of the earth. The most fertile districts of the habit- 

* Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen. 
Cadell, 1811. 



able globe are now actually cultivated by men for 
animals, at a delay and waste of aliment absolutely in- 
capable of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, 
to any great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural 
craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater 
licence of the privilege by subjection to supernumerary 
diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation, that should 
take the lead in this great reform, would insensibly 
become agricultural ; commerce, with all its vice, self- 
ishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more 
natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the 
excessive complication of political relations would be so 
far simplified, that every individual might feel and 
understand why he loved his country, and took a per- 
sonal interest in its welfare. How would England, for 
example, depend on the caprices of foreign rulers, if 
she contained within herself all the necessaries, and 
despised whatever they possessed of the luxuries of 
life ? How could they starve her into compliance with 
their views ? Of what consequence would it be that 
they refused to take her woollen manufactures, when 
large and fertile tracts of the island ceased to be allotted 
to the waste of pasturage ? On a natural system of 
diet, we should require no spices from India ; no wines 
from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira ; none of 
those multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every 
corner of the globe is rifled, and which are the causes 
of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and 
sanguinary national disputes. In the history of modern 
times, the avarice of commercial monopoly, no le63 
than the ambition of weak and wicked chiefs, seems to 
have fomented the universal discord, to have added 
stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and indocility 
to the infatuation of the people. Let it ever be re- 
membered, that it is the direct influence of commerce 
to make the interval between the richest and the poor- 
est man wider and more unconquerable. Let it be re- 
membered, that it is a foe to everything of real worth 
and excellence in the human character. The odious 
and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the 
ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism : 
and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarce 
capable of cure. Is it impossible to realise a state of 
society^ where all the energies of man shall be directed 
to the production of his solid happiness ? Certainly, 
if this advantage (the object of all political speculation) 
be in any degree attainable, it is attainable only by a 
community which holds no factitious incentives to the 
avarice and ambition of the few, and which is internally 
organised for the liberty, security, and comfort of the 
many. None must be intrusted with power (and 
money is the completest species of power) who do not 
stand pledged to use it exclusively for the general 
benefit. But the use of animal flesh and fermented 
liquors directly militates with this equality of the rights 
of man. The peasant cannot gratify these fashionable 
cravings without leaving his family to starve. Without 
disease and war, those sweeping curtailers of population, 
pasturage would include a waste too great to be afforded. 
The labour requisite to support a family is far lighter * 
than is usually supposed. The peasantry work, not 



* It has come under the author's experience, that some 
of the workmen on an embankment in North Wales, who 
in consequence of the inability of the proprietor to pay 
them, seldom received their wages, have supported large 
families by cultivating small spots of sterile ground by 
moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's poem, " Bread or the 
Poor," is an account of an industrious labourer, who, by 
working in a small garden, before and after his day's task, 
attained to an enviable state of independence. 
n 2 



se 



NOTES ON QUEEN MAB. 



only for themselves, but for the aristocracy, the array, 
and the manufacturers. 

The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously 
greater than that of any other. It strikes at the root 
of the evil. To remedy the abuses of legislation, 
before we annihilate the propensities by which they are 
produced, is to suppose, that, by taking away the effect, 
the cause will cease to operate. But the efficacy of 
this system depends entirely on the proselytism of in- 
dividuals, and grounds its merits, as a benefit to the 
community, upon the total change of the dietetic habits 
in its members. It proceeds securely from a number 
of particular cases to one that is universal, and has this 
advantage over the contrary mode, lhat one error does 
not invalidate all that has gone before. 

Let not too much, however, be expected from this 
system. The healthiest among us is not exempt from 
hereditary disease. The most symmetrical, athletic, 
and long-lived, is a being inexpressibly inferior to what 
he would have been, had not the unnatural habits of 
his ancestors accumulated for him a certain portion of 
malady and deformity. In the most perfect specimen 
of civilised mau, something is still found wanting by 
the physiological critic. Can a return to nature, then, 
instantaneously eradicate predispositions that have been 
slowly taking root in the silence of innumerable ages ? 
— Indubitably not. All that I contend for is, that, 
from the moment of relinquishing all unnatural habits, 
no new disease is generated ; and that the predisposition 
to hereditary maladies gradually perishes for want of 
its accustomed supply. In cases of consumption, cancer, 
gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the invariable ten- 
dency of a diet of vegetables and pure water. 

Those who may be induced by these remarks to give 
the vegetable system a fair trial should, in the first place, 
date the commencement of their practice from the mo- 
ment of their conviction. All depends upon breaking 
through a pernicious habit resolutely and at once. 
Dr. Trotter* asserts, that no drunkard was ever re- 
formed by gradually relinquishing his dram. Animal 
flesh, in its effects on the human stomach, is analogous 
to a dram. It is similar to the kind, though differing 
in the degree, of its operation. The proselyte to pure 
diet must be warned to expect a temporary diminution 
of muscular strength. The subtraction of a powerful 
stimulus will suffice to account for this event. But it 
is only temporary, and is succeeded by an equable capa- 
bility for exertion, far surpassing his former various 
and fluctuating strength. Above all, he will acquire 
an easiness of breathing, by which such exertion is per- 
formed, with a remarkable exemption from that pain- 
ful and difficult panting now felt by almost every one 
after hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He will 
be equally capable of bodily exertion, or mental appli- 
cation, after as before his simple meal. He will feel 
none of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irrita- 
bility, the direct consequence of exhausting stimuli, 
would yield to the power of natural and tranquil im- 
pulses. He will no longer pine under the lethargy of 
ennui, that unconquerable weariness of life, more to be 
dreaded than death itself. He will escape the epidemic 
madness which broods over its own injurious notions 
of the Deity, and " realises the hell that priests and 
beldams feign." Every man forms as it were his god 
from his own character ; to the divinity of one of simple 
habits no offering would be more acceptable than the 
happiness of his creatures. He would be incapable of 
hating or persecuting others for the love of God. He 
will find, moreover, a system of simple diet to be a 
* See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament. 



system of perfect epicurism. He will no longer be in- 
cessantly occupied in blunting and destroying those 
organs from which he expects his gratification. The 
pleasures of taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, 
beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, with a dessert of apples, 
gooseberries, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and, in 
winter, oranges, apples, and pears, is far greater than 
is supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this 
plain fare with the sauce of appetite will scarcely join 
with the hypocritical sensualist at a lord-mayor's feast, 
who declaims against the pleasures of the table. 
Solomon kept a thousand concubines,, and owned in 
despair that all was vanity. The man, whose happiness 
is constituted by the society of one amiable woman, 
would find some difficulty in sympathising with the 
disappointment of this venerable debauchee. 

I address myself not to the young enthusiast only, 
the ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and 
passionate moralist, yet un vitiated by the contagion of 
the world. He will embrace a pure system from its 
abstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity, and its promise 
of wide-extended benefit ; unless custom has turned 
poison into food, he will hate the brutal pleasures of 
the chase by instinct ; it will be a contemplation full 
of horror and disappointment to his mind, that beings, 
capable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies, 
should take delight in the death-pangs and last con- 
vulsions of dying animals. The elderly man, whose 
youth has been poisoned by intemperance, or who has 
lived with apparent moderation, and is afflicted with a 
variety of painful maladies, would find his account in 
a beneficial change produced without the risk of poison- 
ous medicines. The mother to whom the perpetual 
restlessness of disease, and unaccountable deaths inci- 
dent to her children, are the causes of incurable unhap- 
piness, would on this diet experience the satisfaction of 
beholding their perpetual health and natural playful- 
ness *. The most valuable lives are daily destroyed 
by diseases that it is dangerous to palliate, and impossi- 
ble to cure, by medicine. How much longer will man 
continue to pimp for the gluttony of death, his most 
insidious, implacable, and eternal, foe? 

'AWa Zp&KOvras ayplovs /caAetT6,/cai fl-apSaAeiS, koX 
Aeoj/Tas, abrol 8e /itaKpofetre els «/toT7jTa, naTaXnr6v- 
res eKeiuois ovZiv iiielvois fihr yhp 6 <p6vos rpo<pi], 
7}pAv 8e otyov i(TTtV. 

***** 

"Ort yhp ovk eariu au6ptioir(f> koto, <pvo~iv to crap/co- 
<paye7v t irpuTov jxkv airb rwv awfidraw 8r)\ouTai ttjs 
KaTcurxevris. Ovdev) yap sotice rb avdpd>Trov awfia tS>v 
eir\ aapKocpa'vlq yeyovSruv, ov XP^Ttis x*' l ^ ovs > 0VK 
o|ut77S ovvxos, ov TpaxvTi)S bSSvTuu irp6(T€(rTiv, ov 
KoiXlas evrovia /cat irvev/j.aTOS QepfiSr-rts, rptyat /cat 
KOTtpyao-ao-Qai Swarfy to Papb /cat Kpewties' aAA' 

* See Mr. Newton's book. His children are the most 
beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to con- 
ceive : the girls are perfect models for a sculptor ; their 
dispositions are also the most gentle and conciliating ; the 
judicious treatment which they experience in other points 
may be a correlative cause of this. In the first five yeais 
of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7500 die of 
various diseases, and how many more of those that survive 
are rendered miserable by maladies not immediately mor- 
tal ! The quality and quantity of a woman's milk are 
materially injured by the use of dead flesh. In an island 
near Iceland, where no vegetables are to be got, the chil- 
dren invariably die of tetanus before they are three weeks 
old, and the population is supplied from the main land.— 
Sir G. Mackenzie's History of Iceland. See also Emiie, 
chap. i. pages 53, 54, 56. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON QUEEN MAB. 



37 



avrSdtv 7} (pvais rfj A€i6tt]ti root/ d86vra>v, /cat rrj 
a-fiiKpdTriTi rod arS/iaros, Kal rfi /uaXandrrtri rr)s 
y\(i>(To"r)S, Kal rrj irpbs ne^iv afx&AvTrjTL rod Trvev/xa- 
ros, ££6/xvvrcu t))v aapKO(f>ayiav. El 8e \4yeis -rrecpv- 
Kevou aeavrbv 4nl roiavrriv iSeadrjU, t> 0ov\€t <paye?v, 
irpwrov avrbs o.tt6kt^iuov d\\' avrbs diet aeavrov, (jltj 
Xpficdp-evos KOTridi, firjdt rvaaicp rivl, yu^Se TreKcKfi' 
aWa us Kvkoi Kal &pKroi Kal \4ovres avrol a>s scrd't- 
oucrt <povevovo~LV, aVeAe 5rjyp.art fiovv' r) o~r6/j.ari ovv, 
r) &pva, r) \aya>bv, Siapp-q^of, Kal (pdye irpoairsauv en 
£a>i/Tos wg eKtlva. 



'H/xeTs 5e ovrws iu rep fxiai(p6vcp r pv(pS}p.ev , &o~re 
otf/ov rb Kpeas Trpoaayopevonev, elro oipwu irpbs avrb 
rb Kpeas deSpeda, dvapuyvvvrss eAatov, olvov, fi4\i, 



ydpov, o|os, ^Sva/jLacTi *2,vpiaK0?s , A/5paj3i«oiS, oScnrep 
ovroos PtKpbv £vTa<pid£ovT€S. Kal yap oiirws avrwu 
SiakvdevTQW Kal nahaxQwrcov Kal rp6irov riva Kpev- 
aairevrwv epyou io~rl ry\v neil/iv Kparriaai, Kal Sia- 
Kparndeiaris 5e Setuds )3apimjTas ifxiroiel ical vocrwSas 
air etyias. 



Ovru rb irpwrov &ypi6v n tybv tfiptibdri Kal KaKovp- 
yov eha opvis ris r) Ix^vs d\Kvffro- Kal yevS/xevov, 
ovrw Kal 7rpoeueA.6T7jcrai/ iv iKeivoisrb vlkovu iirl fiovv 
ipydT7]ur)\6e, Kal rb kSct/j-qv irp6f3arov } Kal rbu oIkov- 
povv aKeKrpvova' Kal KarapLiKpbv ourco rr)V dirXrjcrriai' 
rovcaffravres, iirl o~(puyds dvdp&iroov, Kal <t>6vovs, teal 
iro\4(AOvs irpor\\Qou. 

IIAout. 7repl rrjs ~2,apKo<payias. 



NOTE ON QUEEN MAB. BY THE EDITOR. 



Shelley was eighteen when he wrote " Queen 
Mab :" he never published it. When it was written, 
he had come to the decision that he was too 
young to be a " judge of controversies ;" and he 
was desirous of acquiring u that sobriety of spirit 
which is the characteristic of true heroism." But 
he never doubted the truth or utility of his opi- 
nions ; and in printing and privately distributing 
" Queen Mab" he believed that he should further 
their dissemination, without occasioning the mis- 
chief either to others or himself that might arise 
from publication. It is doubtful whether he would 
himself have admitted it into a collection of his 
works. His severe classical taste, refined by the 
constant study of the Greek poets, might have 
discovered defects that escape the ordinary reader, 
and the change his opinions underwent in many 
points, would have prevented him from putting 
forth the speculations of his boyish days. But the 
poem is too beautiful in itself, and far too remark- 
able as the production of a boy of eighteen, to allow 
of its being passed over : besides that having been 
frequently reprinted, the omission would be vain. 
In the former edition certain portions were left out, 
as shocking the general reader from the violence 
of their attack on religion. I myself had a painful 
feeling that such erasures might be looked upon 
as a mark of disrespect towards the author, and 
am glad to have the opportunity of restoring 
them. The notes also are reprinted entire ; not 
because they are models of reasoning or lessons 
of truth ; but because Shelley wrote them. And 
that all that a man, at once so distinguished and 
so excellent, ever did, deserves to be preserved. 



The alterations his opinions underwent ought to 
be recorded, for they form his history. 

A series of articles was published in the " New 
Monthly Magazine," during the autumn of the 
year 1832, written by a man of great talent, a 
fellow collegian and warm friend of Shelley : they 
describe admirably the state of his mind during 
his collegiate life. Inspired with ardour for the 
acquisition of knowledge ; endowed with the 
keenest sensibility, and with the fortitude of a 
martyr, Shelley came among his fellow-creatures, 
congregated for the purposes of education, like a 
spirit from another sphere, too delicately organised 
for the rough treatment man uses towards man, 
especially in the season of youth ; and too resolute 
in carrying out his own sense of good and justice 
not to become a victim. To a devoted attachment 
to those he loved, he added a determined resistance 
to oppression. Refusing to fag at Eton, he was 
treated with revolting cruelty by masters and 
boys : this roused, instead of taming his spirit, and 
he rejected the duty of obedience, when it was 
enforced by menaces and punishment. To aversion 
to the society of his fellow-creatures, such as he 
found them when collected together in societies, 
where one egged on the other to acts of tyranny, 
was joined the deepest sympathy and compassion: 
while the attachment he felt for individuals and 
the admiration with which he regarded their 
powers and their virtues, led him to entertain a 
high opinion of the perfectibility of human nature, 
and he believed that all could reach the highest 
grade of moral improvement, did not the customs 






EDITOR'S NOTE ON QUEEN MAB. 



and prejudices of society foster evil passions, ami 
excuse evil actions. 

The oppression which, trembling at every nerve 
yet resolute to heroism, it was his ill fortune to 
encounter at school and at college, led him to 
dissent in all things from those whose arguments 
were blows, whose faith appeared to engender 
blame and hatred. u During my existence," he 
wrote to a friend in 1812, " I have incessantly 
speculated, thought, and read." His readings 
were not always well chosen ; among them were 
the works of the French philosophers ; as far as 
metaphysical argument went, he temporarily be- 
came a convert. At the same time, it was the 
cardinal article of his faith, that if men were but 
taught and induced to treat their fellows with love, 
charity, and equal rights, this earth would realise 
Paradise. He looked upon religion as it is pro- 
fessed, and, above all, practised, as hostile, instead 
of friendly, to the cultivation of those virtues, 
which would make men brothers. 

Can this be wondered at ? At the age of seven- 
teen, fragile in health and frame, of the purest 
habits in morals, full of devoted generosity and 
universal kindness, glowing with ardour to attain 
wisdom, resolved at every personal sacrifice to do 
right, burning with a desire for affection and sym- 
pathy, — he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth 
as a eriminal. 

The cause was, that he was sincere ; that he 
believed the opinions which he entertained, to be 
true ; and he loved truth with a martyr's love : he 
was ready to sacrifice station and fortune, and his 
dearest affections, at its shrine. The sacrifice was 
demanded from, and made by, a youth of seventeen. 
It is a singular fact in the history of society in the 
civilised nations of modern times, that no false 
step is so irretrievable as one made in early 
youth. Older men, it is true, when they oppose 
their fellows, and transgress ordinary rules, carry 
a certain prudence or hypocrisy as a shield 
along with them. But youth is rash ; nor can 
it imagine, while asserting what it believes to be 
true, and doing what it believes to be right, that 
it should be denounced as vicious, and pursued as 
a criminal. 

Shelley possessed a quality of mind which ex- 
perience has shown me to be of the rarest occur- 
rence among human beings : this was his unworld- 
liness. The usual motives that rule men, prospects 
of present or future advantage, the rank and 
fortune of those around, the taunts and censures, 
or the praise of those who were hostile to him, 
had no influence whatever over his actions, and 
apparently none over his thoughts. It is difficult 



even to express the simplicity and directness of 
purpose that adorned him. Some few might be 
found in the history of mankind, and some one at 
least among his own friends, equally disinterested 
and scornful, even to severe personal sacrifices, 
of every baser motive. But no one, I believe, 
ever joined this noble but passive virtue to equal 
active endeavours, for the benefit of his friends and 
mankind in general, and to equal power to produce 
the advantages he desired. The world's brightest 
gauds, and its most solid advantages, were of no 
worth in his eye^, when compared to the cause of 
what he considered truth, and the good of his 
fellow-creatures. Born in a position which, to his 
inexperienced mind, afforded the greatest facilities 
to practise the tenets he espoused, he boldly 
declared the use he would make of fortune and 
station, and enjoyed the belief that he should 
materially benefit his fellow-creatures by his 
actions ; while, conscious of surpassing powers of 
reason and imagination, it is not strange that he 
should, even while so young, have believed that 
his written thoughts would tend to disseminate 
opinions, which he believed conducive to the hap- 
piness of the human race. 

If man were a creature devoid of passion, he 
might have said and done all this with quietness. 
But he was too enthusiastic, and too full of hatred 
of all the ills he witnessed, not to scorn danger. 
Various disappointments tortured, but could not 
tame, his soul. The more enmity he met, the 
more earnestly he became attached to his peculiar 
views, and hostile to those of the men who perse- 
cuted him. 

He was animated to greater zeal by compassion 
for his fellow-creatures. His sympathy was excited 
by the misery with which the world is bursting. 
He witnessed the sufferings of the poor, and was 
aware of the evils of ignorance. He desired to 
induce every rich man to despoil himself of super- 
fluity, and to create a brotherhood of property 
and service, and was ready to be the first to lay 
down the advantages of his birth. He was of too 
uncompromising a disposition to join any party. 
He did not in his youth look forward to gradual 
improvement : nay, in those days of intolerance, 
now almost forgotten, it seemed as easy to look 
forward to the sort of millennium of freedom and 
brotherhood, which he thought the proper state 
of mankind, as to the present reign of moderation 
and improvement. Ill health made him believe 
that his race would soon be run ; that a year or 
two was all he had of life. He desired that these 
years should be useful and illustrious. He saw, 
in a fervent call on his fellow -creatures to sharr 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON QUEEN MAB. 



30 



alike the blessings of the creation, to love and 
serve each other, the noblest work that life and 
time permitted him. In this spirit he composed 
Queen Mab. 

He was a lover of the wonderful and wild in 
literature; but had not fostered these tastes at 
their genuine sources — the romances and chivalry 
of the middle ages; but in the perusal of such 
German works as were current in those days. 
Under the influence of these, he, at the age of 
fifteen, wrote two short prose romances of slender 
merit. The sentiments and language were exag- 
gerated, the composition imitative and poor. He 
wrote also a poem on the subject of Ahasuerus — 
being led to it by a German fragment he picked 
up, dirty and torn, in Lincoln's-inn-Fields. This 
fell afterwards into other hands — and was con- 
siderably altered before it was printed. Our 
earlier English poetry was almost unknown to 
him. The love and knowledge of nature developed 
by Wordsworth — the lofty melody and mysterious 
beauty of Coleridge's poetry — and the wild fan- 
tastic machinery and gorgeous scenery adopted 
by Southey, composed his favourite reading ; the 
rhythm of Queen Mab was founded on that of 
Thalaba, and the first few lines bear a striking 
resemblance in spirit, though not in idea, to the 
opening of that poem. His fertile imagination, 
and ear, tuned to the finest sense of harmony, 
preserved him from imitation. Another of his 
favourite books was the poem of Gebir, by Walter 
Savage Landor. From his boyhood he had a 
wonderful facility of versification which he carried 
into another language, and his Latin school verses 
were composed with an ease and correctness that 
procured for him prizes — and caused him to be 
resorted to by all his friends for help. He was, 
at the period of writing Queen Mab, a great 
traveller within the limits of England, Scotland, 
and Ireland. His time was spent among the 
loveliest scenes of these countries. Mountain and 
lake and forest were his home ; the phenomena 
of nature were his favourite study. He loved 
to inquire into their causes, and was addicted 
to pursuits of natural philosophy and chemistry, 
as far as they could be carried on, as an 
amusement. These tastes gave truth and 
vivacity to his descriptions, and warmed his 
soul with that deep admiration for the wonders 
of Nature which constant association with her 
inspired. 

He never intended to publish Queen Mab as it 
stands ; but a few years after, when printing 
Alastor, he extracted a small portion which he 
entitled « The Daemon of the World r' in this he 



changed somewhat the versification — and made 
other alterations scarcely to be called improve- 
ments. 

I extract the invocation of Queen Mab to the 
Soul of Ianthe, as altered in " The Daemon of the 
World." I give it as a specimen of the altera- 
tions made. It well characterises his own state 
of mind : 

INVOCATION. 

Maiden, the world's supremest spirit 
Beneath the shadow of her wings 
Folds all thy memory doth inherit 
From ruin of divinest things, 

Feelings that lure thee to betray, 
And light of thoughts that pass away. 

For thou hast earned a mighty boon ; 

The truths which wisest poets see 
Dimly, thy mind may make its own, 
Rewarding its own majesty, 

Entranced in some diviner mood 
Of self-oblivious solitude. 

Custom and faith and power thou spurnest. 

From hate and fear thy heart is free ; 
Ardent and pure as day thou burnest 
For dark and cold mortality ; 
A living light to cheer it long, 
The watch-fires of the world among. 

Therefore, from nature's inner shrine, 

Where gods and fiends in worship bend, 
Majestic Spirit, be it thine 

The flame to seize, the veil to rend, 
Where the vast snake Eternity 
In charmed sleep doth ever lie. 

All that inspires thy voice of love, 
Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes, 
Or through thy frame doth burn and move, 
Or think, or feel, awake, arise ! 
Spirit, leave for mine and me 
Earth's unsubstantial mimicry ! 

Some years after, when in Italy, a bookseller 
published an edition of Queen Mab as it originally 
stood. Shelley was hastily written to by his 
friends;' under the idea that, deeply injurious as 
the mere distribution of the poem had proved, 
the publication might awaken fresh persecutions. 
At the suggestion of these friends he wrote a 
letter on the subject, printed in " The Examiner" 
newspaper — with which I close this history of his 
earliest work. 



4 



EDITORS NOTE ON QUEEN MAB. 



TO THK EDITOR OF " THE EXAMINER." 

« Sir, 

** Having heard that a poem, entitled ' Queen 
Mab,'has been surreptitiously published in London, 
and that legal pi'oceedings have been instituted 
against the publisher, I request the favour of 
your insertion of the following explanation of the 
affair, as it relates to me. 

" A poem, entitled * Queen Mab,' was written 
by me, at the age of eighteen, I dare say in a 
sufficiently intemperate spirit — but even then was 
not intended for publication, and a few copies 
only were struck off, to be distributed among my 
personal friends. I have not seen this production 
for several years ; I doubt not but that it is 
perfectly worthless in point of literary compo- 
sition; and that in all that concerns moral and 
political speculation, as well as in the subtler 
discriminations of metaphysical and religious 
doctrine, it is still more crude and immature. I 
am a devoted enemy to religious, political, and 
domestic oppression ; and I regret this publication 
not so much from literary vanity, as because I 



fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the 
sacred cause of freedom. I have directed my 
| solicitor to apply to Chancery for an injunction 
to restrain the sale ; but after the precedent 
of Mr. Southey's < Wat Tyler,' (a poem, written, 
I believe, at the same age, and with the same 
unreflecting enthusiasm,) with little hope of 



" Whilst I exonerate myself from all share in 
having divulged opinions hostile to existing sanc- 
tions, under the form, whatever it may be, which 
they assume in this poem ; it is scarcely necessary 
for me to protest against the system of inculcating 
the truth of Christianity or the excellence of 
Monarchy, however true or however excellent 
they may be, by such equivocal arguments as 
confiscation and imprisonment, and invective and 
slander, and the insolent violation of the most 
sacred ties of nature and society. 

« Sir, 

a I am your obliged and obedient servant, 

" Percy B. Shelley 

" Pisa, June 22, 1821." 



END OF QUEEN 31AK. 



II 



I i 



ALASTOR; 

OR, 

THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem amans amare. 

Confess. St. August. 



PREFACE. 

The poem entitled" Alastor," may be considered as 
allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of 
the human mind. It represents a youth of uncor- 
rupted feelings and adventurous genius, led forth by an 
imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity 
■with all that is excellent and majestic, to the con- 
templation of the universe. He drinks deep of the 
fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The 
magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks 
profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and 
affords to their modifications a variety not to be ex- 
hausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to 
point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he 
is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the 
period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His 
mind is at length suddenly awakened, and thirsts for 
intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He 
images to himself the Being whom he loves. Con- 
versant with speculations of the sublimest and most 
perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his 
own imaginations, unites all of wonderful, or wise, or 
beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover, 
could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagi- 
nation, the functions of sense, have their respective 
requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers 
in other human beings. The Poet is represented as 
uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a 
single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his 
conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends 
to an untimely grave. 

The picture is not barren of instruction to actual 
men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged 
by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to 
speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the lumi- 
naries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, 
by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its 
influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those 
meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their 
destiny is more abject and inglorious, as their delin- 
quency is more contemptible and pernicious. They 
who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no 
sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illus- 
trious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and 
cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sym- 
pathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy 
nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as 
they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, 
because none feel with them their common nature. 
They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor 
lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor bene- 



factors of their country. Among those who attempt 
to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender- 
hearted perish through the intensity and passion of 
their search after its communities, when the vacancy of 
their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, 
blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes 
who constitute, together with their own, the lasting 
misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love 
not their fellow-beings, live unfruitful lives, and pre- 
pare for their old age a miserable grave. 

The good die first, 
And those whose hearts are dry as summer's dust 
Burn to the socket ! 

December 14, 1815. 



Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood ! 
If our great Mother have imbued my sou? 
With aught of natural piety to feel 
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine •, 
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, 
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, 
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ; 
If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, 
And winter robing with pure snow and crowns 
Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs ; 
If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes 
Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me ; 
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast 
I consciously have injured, but still loved 
And cherished these my kindred ; — then forgive 
This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw 
No portion of your wonted favour now ! 

Mother of this unfathomable world ! 
Favour my solemn song, for I have loved 
Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched 
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, 
And my heart ever gazes on the depth 
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed 
In charnels and on coffins, where black death 
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, 
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings 
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, 
Thy messenger, to render up the tale 
Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, 
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, 
Like an inspired and desperate alchymist 
Staking his very life on some dark hope, 
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks 
With my most innocent love, until strange tears, 
Uniting with those breathless kisses, made 



4 J 



ALASTOR ; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



Such magic as compels the charmed night 
To render up thy charge : and, though ne'er yet 
Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary ; 
Enough from incoinmunicahlo dream, 

And twilight phantasms, and deep noondaythought, 

Has shone within me, that serenely now 

And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre 

Suspended in the solitary dome 

Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 

I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain 

May modulate with murmurs of the air, 

And motions of the forests and the sea, 

And voice of living beings, aud woven hymns 

Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. 

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 
No human hands with pious reverence reared, 
But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds 
Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid 
Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness ; 
A lovely youth, — no mourning maiden decked 
With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, 
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : 
Gentle, and brave, and generous, no lorn bard 
Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : 
He lived, he died, he sang in solitude. 
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, 
And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined 
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. 
The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, 
And Silence too, enamoured of that voice,, 
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. 

By solemn vision and bright silver dream, 
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight 
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air, 
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. 
The fountains of divine philosophy 
Fled not his thirsting lips ; and all of great, 
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past 
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt 
And knew. When early youth had past, he left 
His cold fireside and alienated home, 
To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. 
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness 
Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought 
With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps 
He, like her shadow, has pursued, where'er 
The red volcano overcanopies 
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 
With burning smoke : or where bitumen lakes, 
On black bare pointed islets ever beat 
With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves, 
Rugged and dark, winding among the springs, 
Of fire and poison, inaccessible 
To avarice or pride, their starry domes 
Of diamond and of gold expand above 
Numberless and immeasurable halls, 
Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines 
Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. 
Nor had that scene of ampler majesty 
Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven 
And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims 
To love and wonder ; he would linger long 
In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, 
Until the doves and squirrels would partake 
From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, 
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, 
And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er 



The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend 
Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form 
More graceful than her own. 

His wandering step, 
Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 
The awful ruins of the days of old : 
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste 
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange 
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, 
Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, 
Dark Ethiopia on her desert hills 
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, 
Stupendous columns, and wild images 
Of more than man, where marble demons watch 
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men 
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, 
He lingered, poring on memorials 
Of the world's youth, through the long burning day 
Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the 

moon 
Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades 
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed 
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind 
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw 
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. 

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, 
Her daily portion, from her father's tent, 
And spread her matting for his couch, and stole 
From duties and repose to tend his steps : — 
Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe 
To speak her love : — and watched his nightly sleep, 
Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips 
Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath 
Of innocent dreams arose : then, when red morn 
Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home, 
Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned. 

The Poet wandering on, through Arabie 
And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, 
And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down 
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, 
In joy and exultation held his way ; 
Till in the vale of Cachmire, far within 
Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine 
Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, 
Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched 
His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep 
There came, a dream of hopes that never yet 
Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid 
Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. 
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul 
Heard in the calm of thought ; its music long, 
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held 
His inmost sense suspended in its web 
Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. 
Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, 
And lofty hopes of divine liberty, 
Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, 
Himself a poet. Soon the solemn mood 
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame 
A permeating fire : wild numbers then 
She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs 
Subdued by its own pathos : her fair hands 
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp 
Strange symphony, and in their branching veins 
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. 



ALASTOR ; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



4:$ 



The beating of her heart was heard to fill 
The pauses of her music, and her breath 
Tumultuously accorded with those fits 
Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, 
As if her heart impatiently endured 
Its bursting burthen : at the sound he turned, 
And saw by the warm light of their own life 
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil 
Of woven wind ; her outspread arms now bare, 
Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, 
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips 
Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. 
His strong heart sank and sickened with excess 
Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and 

quelled 
His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet 
Her panting bosom : — she drew back awhile, 
Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, 
With frantic gesture and short breathless cry 
Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. 
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night 
Involved and swallowed up the vision ; sleep, 
Like a dark flood suspended in its course, 
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain. 

Roused by the shock, he started from his trance — 
The cold white light of morning, the blue moon 
Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, 
The distinct valley and the vacant woods, 
Spread round him where he stood. Whither have 
The hues of heaven that canopied his bower [fled 
Of yesternight ? The sounds that soothed his sleep, 
The mystery and the majesty of Earth, 
The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes 
Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly 
As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. 
The spirit of sweet human love has sent 
A vision to the sleep of him who spurned 
Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues 
Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade ; 
He overleaps the bounds. Alas ! alas ! 
Were limbs and breath and being intertwined 
Thus treacherously ? Lost, lost, for ever lost, 
In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, 
That beautiful shape ! Does the dark gate of death 
Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, 
Sleep ? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds, 
And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake, 
Lead only to a black and watery depth, [hung, 
While death's blue vault with loathliest vapours 
Where every shade which the foul grave exhales 
Hides its dead eye from the detested day, 
Conduct, Sleep, to thy delightful realms ? 
This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart, 
The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung 
His brain even like despair. 

While daylight held 
The sky, the Poet kept mute conference 
With his still soul. At night the passion came, 
Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, 
And shook him from his rest, and led him forth 
Into the darkness. — As an eagle grasped 
In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast 
Burn with the poison, and precipitates [cloud, 
Through night and day, tempest, and calm and 
Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight 
O'er the wide aery wilderness : thus driven 
By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, 
Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, 



Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, 

Startling with careless step the moon-light snake, 

He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, 

Shedding the mockery of its vital hues 

Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on, 

Till vast Aornos, seen from Petra's steep, 

Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ; 

Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs 

Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind 

Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, 

Day after day, a weary waste of hours, 

Bearing within his life the brooding care 

That ever fed on its decaying flame. 

And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair, 

Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, 

Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand 

Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ; 

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, ^shone 

As in a furnace burning secretly 

From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, 

Who ministered with human charity 

His human wants, beheld with wondering awe 

Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, 

Encountering on some dizzy precipice 

That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind 

With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet 

Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused 

In his career : the infant would conceal 

His troubled visage in his mother's robe 

In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, 

To remember their strange light in many a dream 

Of after times ; but youthful maidens, taught 

By nature, would interpret half the woe 

That wasted him, would call him with false names 

Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand 

At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path 

Of his departure from their father's door. 

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste 
Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged 
His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, 
Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. 
It rose as he approached, and with strong wings 
Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course 
High over the immeasurable main. 
His eyes pursued its flight : — " Thou hast a home, 
Beautiful bird ! thou voyagest to thine home, 
Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 
With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 
Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 
And what am I that I should linger here, 
With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 
Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 
To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers 
In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven 
That echoes not my thoughts ? " A gloomy smile 
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. 
For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly 
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, 
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, 
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. 

Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around : 
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight 
Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. 
A little shallop floating near the shore 
Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. 
It had been long abandoned, for its sides 
Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints 



41 



ALASTOR ; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



Swayed with the undulations of the tide, 

A restless impulse urged him to embark 

And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste ; 

For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves 

The slimy eaverns of the populous deep. 

The day was fair and sunny : sea and sky 
Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind 
Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. 
Following his eager soul, the wanderer 
heaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft 
On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, 
And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea 
Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. 

As one that in a silver vision floats 

Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds 

Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly 

Along the dark and ruffled waters fled 

The straining boat. — A whirlwind swept it on, 

With fierce gusts and precipitating force, 

Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. 

The waves arose. Higher and higher still 

Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's 

scourge 
Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp. 
Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war 
Of wave running on wave, and blast on blast 
Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven 
With dark obliterating course, he sate : 
As if their genii were the ministers 
Appointed to conduct him to the light 
Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate 
Holding the steady helm. Evening came on, 
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues 
High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray 
That canopied his path o'er the waste deep ; 
Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, 
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks 
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day ; 
Night followed, clad with stars. On every sido 
More horribly the multitudinous streams 
Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war 
Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock 
The calm and spangled sky. The little boat 
Still fled before the storm ; still fled, like foam 
Down the steep cataract of a wintry river ; 
Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave ; 
Now leaving far behind the bursting mass 
That fell, convulsing ocean. Safely fled — 
As if that frail and wasted human form 
Had been an elemental god. 

At midnight 
The moon arose : and lo ! the ethereal cliffs 
Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone 
Among the stars like sunlight, and around 
Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves, 
Bursting and eddying irresistibly, 
Rage and resound for ever. — Who shall save ? — 
The boat fled on, — the boiling torrent drove, — 
The crags closed round with black and jagged arms, 
The shattered mountain overhung the sea, 
And faster still, beyond all human speed, 
Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, 
The little boat was driven. A cavern there 
Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths 
Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on 
With unrelaxing speed. "Vision and Love !" 
The Poet cried aloud, " I have beheld 



The path of thy departure. Sleep and death 
Shall not divide us long." 

The boat pursued 
The windings of the cavern. Day-light shone 
At length upon that gloomy river's flow ; 
Now, where the fiercest war among the waves 
Is calm, on the unfathomable stream [riven, 

The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, 
Exposed those black depths to the azure sky, 
Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell 
Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound 
That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass 
Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm ; 
Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, 
Circling immeasurably fast, and laved 
With alternating dash the gnarled roots 
Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms 
In darkness over it. I' the midst was left, 
Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud, 
A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm, 
Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, 
With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round, 
Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose, 
Till on the verge of the extremest curve, 
Where, through an opening of the rocky hank, 
The waters overflow, and a smooth spot 
Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides 
Is left, the boat paused shuddering. Shall it sink 
Down the abyss ? Shall the reverting stress 
Of that resistless gulf embosom it % 
Now shall it fall ? A wandering stream of wind, 
Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded 
And, lo ! with gentle motion between banks [sail, 
Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, 
Beneath a woven grove, it sails, and, hark ! 
The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar, 
With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. 
Where the embowering trees recede, and leave 
A little space of green expanse, the cove 
Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers 
For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes, 
Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave 
Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task, 
Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, 
Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay 
Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed 
To deck with their bright hues his withered hair, 
But on his heart its solitude returned, 
And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid 
In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy 
Had yet performed its ministry : it hung [frame 
Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud 
Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods 
Of night close over it. 

The noonday sun 
Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass 
Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence 
A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, 
Scooped in the dark base of those aery rocks 
Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever. 
The meeting boughs and implicate-^ eaves 
Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led 
By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, 
He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank, 
Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark 
And dark the shades accumulate — the oak, 
Expanding its immense and knotty arms, 
Embraces the light beech. The pyramids 
Of the tall cedar overarching, frame 



ALASTOR ; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



46 



Most solemn domes within, and far below, 
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, 
The ash and the acacia floating hang 
Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed 
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, 
Starr'd with ten thousand blossoms, flow around 
The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes, 
With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, 
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, 
These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs 
Uniting their close union ; the woven leaves 
Make net-work of the dark blue light of day, 
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable 
As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns 
Beneath these canopies extend their swells, 
Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms 
Minute, yet beautiful. One darkest glen 
Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with 
A soul-dissolving odour, to invite [jasmine, 

To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell, 
Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep 
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades, 
Like vaporous shapes half-seen ; beyond, a well, 
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, 
Images all the woven boughs above, 
And each depending leaf, and every speck 
Of azure sky, darting between their chasms ; 
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves 
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star 
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, 
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, 
Or gorgeous insect, floating motionless, 
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings 
Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. 

Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld 

Their own wan fight through the reflected lines 

Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth 

Of that still fountain ; as the human heart, 

Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, 

Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard 

The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung 

Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel 

An unaccustomed presence, and the sound 

Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs 

Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed 

To stand beside him — clothed in no bright robes 

Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, 

Borrow'd from aught the visible world affords 

Of grace, or majesty, or mystery ; — 

But undulating woods, and silent well, 

And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom 

Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming 

Held commune with him, as if he and it 

Were all that was, — only — when his regard 

Was raised by intense pensiveness, — two eyes, 

Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 

And seemed with their serene and azure smiles 

To beckon him. 

Obedient to the light 
That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing 
The windings of the dell. — The rivulet 
Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine 
Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell 
Among the moss, with hollow harmony 
Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones 
It danced ; like childhood laughing as it went : 
Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings 
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud [crept, 



That overhung its quietness. — " O stream ! 
Whose source is inaccessibly profound, 
Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? 
Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, 
Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs, 
Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course 
Have each their type in me : And the wide sky, 
And measureless ocean may declare as soon 
What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud 
Contains thy waters, as the universe [stretched 
Tell where these living thoughts reside, when 
Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste 
I' the passing wind!" 

Beside the grassy shore 
Of the small stream he went ; he did impress 
On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught 
Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one 
Roused by some joyous madness from the couch 
Of fever, he did move ; yet, not like him, 
Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame 
Of his frail exultation shall be spent, 
He must descend. With rapid steps he went 
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow 
Of the wild babbling rivulet ; and now 
The forest's solemn canopies were changed 
For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. 
Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and 

stemmed 
The struggling brook : tall spires of windlestrae 
Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, 
And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines 
Branchless andblasted, clenched with graspingroots 
The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, 
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, 
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin 
And white ; and where irradiate dewy eyes 
Had shone, gleam stony orbs : so from his steps 
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade 
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds 
And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued 
The stream, that with a larger volume now 
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell ; and there 
Fretted a path through its descending curves 
With its wintry speed. On every side now rose 
Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, 
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles 
In the light of evening, and its precipice 
Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, 
'Mid toppling stones, black gulfs, and yawning caves, 
Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues 
To the loud stream. Lo ! where the pass expands 
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, 
And seems, with its accumulated crags, 
To overhang the world : for wide expand 
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon 
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, 
Dim tracks and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom 
Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills 
Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge 
Of the remote horizon. The near scene, 
In naked and severe simplicity, 
Made contrast with the universe. A pine, 
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy 
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast 
Yielding one only response, at each pause, 
In most familiar cadence, with the howl 
The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams 
Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river, 
Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, 



4fi 



ALASTOR; OR, TllK SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



Fell into that immeasurable void, 

Soattermg its waters to the passing winds. 

Yet the grey precipice, and solemn pine 

And torrent, were not all ; — one silent nook 

Wasthere. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, 

Upheld hy knotty roots and fallen rocks, 

It overlooked in its serenity 

The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars. 

1 1 was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile 

liven in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped 

The fissured stones with its entwining arms, 

And did embower with leaves forever green, 

And berries dark, the smooth and even space 

Of its inviolated floor, and here 

The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore, 

I n wanton sport, those brisrht leaves, whose decay, 

Red, yellow, or ethereally pale, 

Rival the pride of summer. "lis the haunt 

Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach 

The wilds to love tranquillity. One step, 

One human step alone, has ever broken 

The stillness of its solitude : — one voice 

Alone inspired its echoes ; — even that voice 

Which hither came, floating among the winds, 

And led the loveliest among human forms 

To make their wild haunts the depository 

Of all the grace and beauty that endued 

Its motions, render up its majesty, 

Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm, 

And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould, 

Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, 

Commit the colours of that varying cheek, 

That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes. 

The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured 

A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge 

That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist 

Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank 

Wan moonlight even to fulness : not a star 

Shone, not a sound was heard ; the very winds, 

Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice 

Slept, clasped in his embrace. — 0, storm of death ! 

Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night : 

And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still 

Guiding its irresistible career 

In thy devastating omnipotence, 

Art king of this frail world, from the red field 

Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, 

The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed 

Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, 

A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls 

His brother Death. A rare and regal prey 

He hath prepared, prowling around the world ; 

Glutted with which thou may'st repose, and men 

Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, 

Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine 

The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. 

When on the threshold of the green recess 
The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death 
Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, 
Did he resign his high and holy soul 
To images of the majestic past, 
That paused within his passive being now, 
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe 
Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place 
His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk 
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone 
Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, 
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink 



Of that obscurest chasm ; — and thus he lay, 

Surrendering to their final impulses 

The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair, 

The torturers, slept : no mortal pain or fear 

Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, 

And his own being unalloyed by pain, 

Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed 

The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there 

At peace, and faintly smiling : — his last sight 

Was the great moon, which o'er the western line 

Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, 

With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed 

To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills 

It rests, and still as the divided frame 

Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, 

That ever beat in mystic sympathy 

With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still : 

And when two lessening points of light alone 

Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp 

Of his faint respiration scarce did stir 

The stagnate night :— till the minutest ray 

Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. 

It paused — it fluttered. But when heaven remained 

Utterly black, the murky shades involved 

An image, silent, cold, and motionless, 

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. 

Even as a vapour fed with golden beams 

That ministered on sunlight, ere the west 

Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame — 

No sense, no motion, no divinity — 

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings 

The breath of heaven did wander — a bright stream 

Once fed with many- voiced waves— a dream 

Of youth, which night and time have quenched for 

ever, 
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now. 

0, for Medea's wondrous alchymy, 
Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam 
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale 
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance ! 0, that God, 
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice 
Which but one living man has drained, who now, 
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels 
No proud exemption in the blighting curse 
He bears, over the world wanders for ever, 
Lone as incarnate death ! 0, that the dream 
Of dark magician in his visioned cave, 
Raking the cinders of a crucible 
For life and power, even when his feeble hand 
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law 
Of this so lovely world ! But thou art fled 
Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn 
Robes in its golden beams, — ah ! thou hast fled ! 
The brave, the geutle, and the beautiful, 
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things 
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms 
And beasts and men five on, and mighty Earth 
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, 
In vesper low or joyous orison, 
Lifts still its solemn voice : — but thou art fled — 
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes 
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee 
Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! 
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips 
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes 
That image sleep in death, upon that form 
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear 
Be shed — not even in thought . N or, when those hues 
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON ALASTOR. 



-17 



Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone 
In the frail pauses of this simple strain, 
Let not high verse, mourning the memory 
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe 
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery 
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain 
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. 



It is a woe " too deep for tears," when all 
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, 
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans, 
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope ; 
But pale despair and cold tranquillity, 
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 



NOTE ON ALASTOR. BY THE EDITOR. 



a Alastor " is written in a very different tone 
from " Queen Mab." In the latter, Shelley poured 
out all the cherished speculations of his youth — all 
the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, 
and hope, to which the present suffering, and what 
he considers the proper destiny of his fellow-crea- 
tures, gave birth. " Alastor," on the contrary, 
contains an individual interest only. A very few 
years, with their attendant events, had checked the 
ardour of Shelley's hopes, though he still thought 
them well grounded, and that to advance their 
fulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve. 

This is neither the time nor place to speak of 
the misfortunes that chequered his life. It will 
be sufficient to say, that in all he did, he at the 
time of doing it believed himself justified to his 
own conscience ; while the various ills of poverty 
and loss of friends brought home to him the sad 
realities of life. Physical suffering had also con- 
siderable influence in causing him to turn his eyes 
inward ; inclining him rather to brood over the 
thoughts and emotions of his own soul, than to 
glance abroad, and to make, as in " Queen Mab," 
the whole universe the object and subject of his 
song. In the spring of 18 15, an eminent physician 
pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a con- 
sumption ; abscesses were formed on his lungs, 
and he suffered acute spasms. Suddenly a com- 
plete change took place : and though through life 
he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symp- 
tom of pulmonary disease vanished. His nerves, 
which nature had formed sensitive to an unex- 
ampled degree, were rendered still more susceptible 
by the state of his health. 

As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the 
Continent, he went abroad. He visited some of 
the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and 
returned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss 



and the Rhine. This river navigation enchanted 
him. In his favourite poem of " Thalaba," his 
imagination had been excited by a description of 
such a voyage. In the summer of 1815, after a 
tour along the southern coast of Devonshire and 
a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishop- 
gate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, 
where he enjoyed several months of comparative 
health and tranquil happiness. The later summer 
months were warm and dry. Accompanied by a 
few friends, he visited the source of the Thames, 
making the voyage in a wherry from Windsor to 
Crichlade. His beautiful stanzas in the church- 
yard of Lechlade were written on that occasion. 
"Alastor "was composed on his return. He spent 
his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great 
Park ; and the magnificent woodland was a fitting 
study to inspire the various descriptions of forest 
scenery we find in the poem. 

None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic 
than this. The solemn spirit that reigns through- 
out, the worship of the majesty of nature, the 
broodings of a poet's heart in solitude — the min- 
gling of the exulting joy which the various aspect 
of the visible universe inspires, with the sad and 
struggling pangs which human passion imparts, 
give a touching interest to the whole. The death 
which he had often contemplated during the last 
months as certain and near, he here represented 
in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, 
soothed his soul to peace. The versification sus- 
tains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout, 
it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather 
to be considered didactic than narrative : it was 
the out-pouring of his own emotions, embodied in 
the purest form he could conceive, painted in the 
ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, 
and softened by the recent anticipation of death. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM 

a $orm. 
IN TWELVE CANTOS. 



Ocrais Se fiporbi/ eOvos ayXaiais aTrrS/xecrda 

Tlspaivei -rrpbs €(TX aT0V 
H\6ov vav<rl 5° oijT€ ire^bs Iwu tt.v evpois 
'Es virepfiopeu}i> ayuva davnaTav 65oV. 

ITU'S. Uvd. x. 



PREFACE. 

The Poem which I now present to the world, is an 
attempt from which I scarcely dare to expect success, 
and in which a writer of established fame might fail 
without disgrace. It is an experiment on the temper 
of the public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier 
condition of moral and political society survives, among 
the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have 
shaken the age in which we live. I have sought to 
enlist the harmony of metrical language, the etherial 
combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transi- 
tions of human passion, all those elements which 
essentially compose a Poem, in the cause of a liberal 
and comprehensive morality; and in the view of 
kindling within the bosoms of my readers, a virtuous 
enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, 
that faith and hope in something good, which neither 
violence, nor misrepresentation, norprejudice, can ever 
totally extinguish among mankind. 

For this purpose, I have chosen a story of human 
passion in its most universal character, diversified with 
moving and romantic adventures, and appealing, in 
contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions, to the 
common sympathies of every human breast. I have 
made no attempt to recommend the motives which I 
would substitute for those at present governing man- 
kind, by methodical and systematic argument. I 
•would only awaken the feelings so that the reader 
should see the beauty of true virtue, and be incited to 
those inquiries which have led to my moral and politi- 
cal creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects 
in the world. The Poem, therefore, (with the excep- 
tion of the first Canto, which is purely introductory,) 
is narrative, not didactic. It is a succession of pictures 
illustrating the growth and progress of individual mind 
aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of 
mankind ; its influence in refining and making pure 
the most daring and uncommon impulses of the ima- 
gination, the understanding, and the senses; its impa- 
tience at " all the oppressions which are done under 
the sun ;" its tendency to awaken public hope and to 
enlighten and improve mankind ; the rapid effects of 
the application of that tendency ; the awakening of 
an immense nation from their slavery and degradation 
to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom ; the 
bloodless dethronement of their oppressors, and the 
unveiling of the religious frauds by which they had 
: been deluded into submission ; the tranquillity of suc- 



cessful patriotism, and the universal toleration ami 
benevolence of true philanthropy ; the treachery and 
barbarity of hired soldiers; vice not the object of 
punishment and hatred, but kindness and pity : the 
faithlessness of tyrants ; the confederacy of the Rulers 
of the World, and the restoration of the expelled 
Dynasty by foreign arms ; the massacre and extermi- 
nation of the Patriots, and the victory of established 
power ; the consequences of legitimate despotism, civil 
war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter extinc- 
tion of the domestic affections ; the judicial murder of 
the advocates of Liberty ; the temporary triumph of 
oppression, that secure earnest of its final and inevit- 
able fall ; the transient nature of ignorance and error, 
and the eternity of genius and virtue. Such is the 
series of delineations of which the Poem consists. And 
if the lofty passions with which it has been my scope 
to distinguish this story, shall not excite in the readei 
a generous impulse, an ardent thirst for excellence, an 
interest profound and strong, such as belongs to no 
meaner desires — let not the failure be imputed to a 
natural unfitness for human sympathy in these sublime 
and animating themes. It is the business of the Poet 
to communicate to others the pleasure and the enthusi- 
asm arising out of those images and feelings, in the 
vivid presence of which within his own mind, consists 
at once his inspiration and his reward. 

The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized 
upon all classes of men during the excesses consequent 
upon the French Revolution, is gradually giving place 
to sanity. It has ceased to be believed, that whole 
generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to 
a hopeless inheritance of ignorance and misery, because 
a nation of men who had been dupes and slaves for 
centuries, were incapable of conducting themselves 
with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon 
as some of their fetters were partially loosened. That 
their conduct could not have been marked by any other 
characters than ferocity and thoughtlessness, is the 
historical fact from which liberty derives all its recom- 
mendations, and falsehood the worst features of its 
deformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human 
things which bears the shipwrecked hopes of men iuto 
a secure haven, after the storms are past. Methinks, 
those who now live have survived an age of despair. 

The French Revolution may be considered as one 
of those manifestations of a general state of feeling 
among civilized mankind, produced by a defect of 
correspondence between the knowledge existing in 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



4!' 



society and the improvement or gradual abolition of 
political institutions. The year 1788 may be assumed 
as the epoch of one of the most important crises pro- 
duced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with 
that event extended to every bosom. The most gene- 
rous and amiable natures were those which participated 
the most extensively in these sympathies. But such 
a degree of unmingled good was expected, as it was 
impossible to realise. If the Revolution had been in 
every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition 
would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as 
fetters which the captive can unlock with the slightest 
motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poison- 
ous rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by 
the atrocities of the demagogues and the re-establish- 
ment of successive tyrannies in France was terrible, 
and felt in the remotest corner of the civilized world. 
Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned 
under the calamities of a social state, according to the 
provisions of which, one man riots in luxury whilst 
another famishes for want of bread % Can he who the 
day before was a trampled slave, suddenly become 
liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent ? This is 
the consequence of the habits of a state of society to 
be produced by resolute perseverance and indefatigable 
hope, and long-suffering and long-believing courage, 
and the systematic efforts of generations of men of 
intellect and virtue. Such is the lesson which experi- 
ence teaches now. But on the first reverses of hope 
in the progress of French liberty, the sanguine eager- 
ness for good overleapt the solution of these questions, 
and for a time extinguished itself in the unexpected- 
ness of their result. Thus many of the most ardent 
and tender-hearted of the worshippers of public good 
have been morally ruined, by what a partial glimpse 
of the events they deplored, appeared to show as ^he 
melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes. 
Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the cha- 
racteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of 
a disappointment that unconsciously finds relief only 
in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This 
influence has tainted the literature of the age with the 
hopelessness of the minds from which it flows. Meta- 
physics,* and inquiries into moral and political science, 
have become little else than vain attempts to revive 
exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those f of 
Mr. Malthus, calculated to lull the oppressors of 
mankind into a security of everlasting triumph. Our 
works of fiction and poetry have been overshadowed 
by the same infectious gloom. But mankind appear 
to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, 
methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that 
belief I have composed the following Poem. 

I do not presume to enter into competition with our 
greatest contemporary Poets. Yet I am unwilling to 
tread in the footsteps of any who have preceded me. 
I have sought to avoid the imitation of any style of 
language or versification peculiar to the original minds 
of which it is the character, designing that even if 

* I ought to except Sir W. Drummond's " Academical 
Questions ; " a volume of very acute and powerful meta- 
physical criticism. 

t It is remarkable, as a symptom of the revival of public 
hope, that Mr. Malthus has assigned, in the later editions 
of his work, an indefinite dominion to moral restraint over 
the principle of population. This concession answers all 
the inferences from his doctrine unfavourable to human 
improvement, and reduces the " Essay on Population," 
to a commentary illustrative of the unanswerableness of 
•• Political Justice." 



what I have produced be worthless, it should still be 
properly my own. Nor have I permitted any system 
relating to mere words, to divert the attention of the 
reader from whatever interest I may have succeeded 
in creating, to my own ingenuity in contriving to dis- 
gust them according to the rules of criticism. I have 
simply clothed my thoughts in what appeared to me 
the most obvious and appropriate language. A per- 
son familiar with nature, and with the most celebrated 
productions of the human mind, can scarcely err in 
following the instinct, with respect to selection of lan- 
guage, produced by that familiarity. 

There is an education peculiarly fitted for a Poet, 
without which, genius and sensibility can hardly fill 
the circle of their capacities. No education indeed 
can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant 
mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in 
which the channels of communication between thought 
and expression have been obstructed or closed. How 
far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter 
classes, I cannot know. I aspire to be something 
better. The circumstances of my accidental education 
have been favourable to this ambition. I have been 
familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes, and 
the sea, and the solitude of forests : Danger, which 
sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my play- 
mate. I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and 
lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a 
wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down 
mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the 
stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day 
down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen 
populous cities, and have watched the passions which 
rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assem- 
bled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of 
the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and 
villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roof- 
less houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished 
upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed 
with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient 
Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own 
country, has been to me like external nature, a pas- 
sion and an enjoyment. Such are the sources from 
which the materials for the imagery of my Poem have 
been drawn. I have considered Poetry in its most 
comprehensive sense, and have read the Poets and the 
Historians, and the Metaphysicians * whose writings 
have been accessible to me, and have looked upon the 
beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth as common 
sources of those elements which it is the province of 
the Poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience 
and the feelings to which I refer, do not in themselves 
constitute men Poets, but only prepare them to be the 
auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found 
to possess that more essential attribute of Poetry, the 
power of awakening in others sensations like those 
which animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak 
sincerely, I know not ; and which, with an acquies- 
cent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the 
effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now 
address. 

I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation 
of any contemporary style. But there must be a resem- 
blance, which does not depend upon their own will, 
between all the writers of any particular age. They 
cannot escape from subjection to a common influence 

* In this sense there may he such a thing as perfecti- 
bility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the concession 
often made by the advocates of human improvement, that 
perfectibility is a term applicable only to science. 



,-»» 



THE REVOLT of islam. 



which avisos out of an infinite combination of circum- 
stances belonging to the times in which they live, 
though each is in a degree the author of the very influ- 
ence by which his being is thus pervaded. Thus, the 
tragic Poets of the age of Pericles ; the Italian revivors 
of ancient learning ; those mighty intellects of our own 
country that succeeded the Reformation, the translators 
of the Bible, Shakspeare, Spenser, the Dramatists of 
the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon * ; the colder 
spirits of the interval that succeeded; — all resemble 
each other, and differ from every other in their several 
classes. In this view of things, Ford can no more 
be called the imitator of Shakspeare, than Shakspeare 
the imitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other 
points of resemblance between thes.e two men, than 
that which the universal and inevitable influence of 
their age produced. And this is an influence which 
neither the meanest scribbler, nor the sublimest genius 
of any era, can escape ; and which I have not attempted 
to escape. 

I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measuie 
inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider it a 
finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse 
of Shakspeare and Milton, but because in the latter 
there is no shelter for mediocrity : you must either 
succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should 
desire. But I was enticed, also, by the brilliancy and 
magnificence of sound which a mind that has been 
nourished upon musical thoughts, can produce by a 
just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this 
measure. Yet there will be found some instances 
where 1 have completely failed in this attempt, and 
one, which I here request the reader to consider as an 
erratum, where there is left most inadvertently an 
alexandrine in the middle of a stanza. 

But in this, as in every other respect, I have written 
fearlessly. It is the misfortune of this age, that its 
Writers, too thoughtless of immortality, are exquisitely 
sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write 
with the fear of Reviews before their eyes. This sys- 
tem of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when 
Poetry was not. Poetry, and the art which professes 
to regulate and limit its powers, cannot subsist together. 
Longinus could not have been the contemporary of 
Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of 
criticism never presumed to assert an understanding of 
its own : it has always, unlike true science, followed, 
not preceded, the opinion of mankind, and would even 
now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest 
Poets to impose gratuitous fetters on their own imagin- 
ations, and become unconscious accomplices in the daily 
murder of all genius either not so aspiring or not so 
fortunate as their own. I have sought therefore to 
write, as I believe that Homer, Shakspeare, and Milton 
wrote, with an utter disregard of anonymous censure. 
I am certain that calumny and misrepresentation, though 
it may move me to compassion, cannot disturb my 
peace. I shall understand the expressive silence of 
those sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves 
to speak. I shall endeavour to extract from the midst 
of insult, and contempt, and maledictions, those admo- 
nitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections 
such censurers may discover in thismyfirst serious appeal 
to the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted 
as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit 

* Milton stands alone in the age which he illumined. 



to he derived from their virulent writings ! As it is, 
1 fear 1 shall be malicious enough to be amused with 
their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the 
Public judge that my composition is worthless, I shall 
indeed bow before the tribunal from which Milton 
received his crown of immortality, and shall seek to 
gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may 
nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may 
not be worthless. I cannot conceive that Lucretius, 
when he meditated that poem whose doctrines are yet 
the basis of our metaphysical knowledge, and whoBe 
eloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in 
awe of such censure as the hired sophists of the impure 
and superstitious noblemen of Rome might affix to 
what he should produce. It was at the period when 
Greece was led captive, and Asia made tributary to the 
Republic, fast verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a 
multitude of Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship 
of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the unworthy success- 
ors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious sub- 
sistence by administering, under the name of freedmeu, 
to the vices and vanities of the great. These wretched 
men were skilled to plead, with a superficial but plau- 
sible set of sophisms, in favour of that contempt for 
virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith 
in portents, the most fatal substitute for benevolence 
in the imaginations of men, which, arising from the 
enslaved communities of the East, then first began to 
overwhelm the western nations in its stream. Were 
these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise 
and lofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with 
a salutary awe? The latest and perhaps the meanest 
of those who follow in his footsteps, would disdain to 
hold life on such conditions. 

The Poem now presented to the Public occupied 
little more than six months in the composition. That 
period has been devoted to the task with unremitting 
ardour and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful 
and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my 
hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the 
world with that perfection which long labour and revi- 
sion is said to bestow. But I found that if I should 
gain something in exactness by this method, I might 
lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and 
language as it flowed fresh from my mind. And 
although the mere composition occupied no more than 
six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly 
gathered in as many years. 

I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish 
between those opinions which have a dramatic pro- 
priety in reference to the characters which they are 
designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. 
The erroneous and degrading idea which men have 
conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken 
against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief 
which some superstitious persons whom I have brought 
upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to 
the character of his benevolence, is widely different 
from my own. In recommending also a great and 
important change in the spirit which animates the 
social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all 
flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our 
nature, which are ever on the watch to mingle with 
and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There 
is no quarter given to Revenge, or Euvy, or Prejudice. 
Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which 
should govern the moral world. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



.01 



DEDICATION. 



There is no danger to a Man, that knows 
What life and death is : there's not any law 
Exceeds his knowledge : neither is it lawful 
That he should stoop to any other law. 

Chapman. 



TO MARY 

i. 
So now my summer-task is ended, Mary, 
And I return to thee, mine own heart's home ; 
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery, 
Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome ; 
Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become 
A star among the stars of mortal night, 
If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, 
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite 
With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light. 



The toil which stole from thee so many an hour 
Is ended — and the fruit is at thy feet ! 
No longer where the woods to frame a bower 
With interlaced branches mix and meet, 
Or where with sound like many voices sweet, 
Water-falls leap among wild islands green, 
Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat 
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen : 
But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been. 



Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, 
when first [pass. 

The clouds which wrap this world from youth did 
I do remember well the hour which burst 
My spirit's sleep : a fresh May-dawn it was, 
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, 
And wept, I knew not why : until there rose 
From the near school-room, voices, that, alas ! 
Were but one echo from a world of woes — 
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 



And then I clasped my hands and looked around, 
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, 
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny 

ground — 
So without shame, I spake :— " I will be wise, 
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 
Such power, for I grow weary to behold 
The selfish and the strong still tyrannise 
Without reproach or check." I then controlled 
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek 

and bold. 

V. 

And from that hour did I with earnest thought 
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, 
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught 
I cared to learn, but from that secret store 
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before 
It might walk forth to war among mankind ; 
Thus power and hope were strengthened more and 
Within me, till there came upon my mind [more 
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 



Alas, that love should be a blight and snare 
To those who seek all sympathies in one ! — 
Such once I sought in vain ; then black despair, 
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown 
Over the world in which I moved alone : — 
Yet never found I one not false to me, 
Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone 
Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be 
Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee. 



Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart 
Fell, like bright Spring upon some herb less plain, 
How beautiful and calm and free thou wert 
In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain 
Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, 
And walked as free as light the clouds among, 
Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain 
From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung 
To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long. 



No more alone through the world's wilderness, 
Although I trod the paths of high intent, 
I journeyed now : no more companionless, 
Where solitude is like despair, I went. — 
There is the wisdom of a stern content 
When Poverty can blight the just and good, 
When Infamy dares mock the innocent, 
And cherished friends turn with the multitude 
To trample : this was ours, and we unshaken stood ! 



Now has descended a serener hour, 

And with inconstant fortune, friends return ; 

Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the 

power 
Which says : — Let scorn be not repaid with scorn. 
And from thy side two gentle babes are born 
To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we 
Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn : 
And these delights, and thou, have been to me 
The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee. 



Is it, that now my inexperienced fingers 
But strike the prelude of a loftier strain 1 
Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers 
Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again, 
Though it might shake the Anarch Custom's reign, 
And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway, 
Holier than was Amphion's ? I would fain 
Reply in hope — but I am worn away, 
And Death and Love are yet contending for their 
prey. 



And what art thou ? I know, but dare not speak 
Time may interpret to his silent years. 
Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek, 
And in the light thine ample forehead wears, 
And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, 
And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy 
Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears : 
And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see 
A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. 



52 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



They say that thou wort lovely from thy birth, 
Of glorious parents thou aspiring Child : 
1 wonder not — for One then left this earth 
Whoso lifo was like a Betting planet mild, 
Which clothed thee in the radiance undet'tled 
Of its departing glory ; still her fame 
Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild 
Which shake these latter days ; and thou canst claim 
The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name. 



One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, 
Which was the echo of three thousand years; 
And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, 
As some lone man who in a desert hears 
The music of his home : — unwonted fears 
Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, 
And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares, 
Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space 

Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling- 
place. 

xrv. 
Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind ! 
If there must be no response to my cry — 
If men must rise and stamp with fury blind 
On his pure name who loves them, — thou and I, 
Sweet Friend ! can look from our tranquillity 
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night, — 
Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by 
Which wTap them from the foundering seaman's 
sight, [light. 

That burn from year to year with unextinguished 



CANTO I. 

i. 
When the last hope of trampled France had failed 
Like a brief dream of unremaining glory, 
From visions of despair I rose, and scaled 
The peak of an aerial promontory, [hoary; 

Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was 
And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken 
Each cloud, and every wave : — but transitory 
The calm : for sudden, the firm earth was shaken, 
As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken. 



So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder 
Burst in far peals along the waveless deep, 
When, gathering fast, around, above, and under, 
Long trains of tremulous mist began to creep, 
Until their complicating lines did steep 
The orient sun in shadow : — not a sound 
Was heard ; one horrible repose did keep 
The forests and the floods, and all around 
Darkness more dread than night was poured upon 
the ground. 

m. 
Hark ! 'tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps 
Earth and the ocean. See ! the lightnings yawn 
Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps 
GUtter and boil beneath : it rages on, 
One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves up- 

[thrown, 
Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by, 
There is a pause — the sea-birds, that were gone 
Into their caves to shriek, come forth to spy 
What calm has fall'n on earth, what light is in the sky. 



For, where the irresistible storm had cloven 
That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen 
Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven 
Most delicately, and the ocean green, 
Beneath that opening spot of blue serene, 
Quivered like burning emerald: calm was spread 
On all below ; but far on high, between 
Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled, 

Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest 
shed. 

v. 
For ever as the war became more fierce 
Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high, 
That spot grew more serene ; blue light did pierce 
The woof of those white clouds, which seemed to lie 
Far, deep, and motionless ; while through the sky 
The pallid semicircle of the moon 
Past on, in slow and moving majesty ; 
Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon 

But slowly fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon. 



I could not choose but gaze ; a fascination 
Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which 

drew 
My fancy thither, and in expectation 
Of what I knew not, I remained :— the hue 
Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue, 
Suddenly stained with shadow did appear ; 
A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew, 
Like a great ship in the sun's sinking sphere 
Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear — 



Even like a bark, which from a chasm of moun- 
Dark, vast, and overhanging, on a river [tains, 
Which there collects the strength of all its foun- 
tains, [quiver, 
Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth 
Sails, oars, and stream, tending to one endeavour ; 
So, from that chasm of light a winged Form 
On all the winds of heaven approaching ever 
Floated, dilating as it came : the storm 
Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift 
and warm. 



A course precipitous, of dizzy speed, 
Suspending thought and breath ; a monstrous 
For in the air do I behold indeed [sight ! 

An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight : — 
And now, relaxing its impetuous flight 
Before the aerial rock on which I stood, 
The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right, 
And hung with lingering wings over the flood, 
And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude. 



A shaft of light upon its wings descended, 
And every golden feather gleamed therein — 
Feather and scale inextricably blended. 
The Serpent's mailed and many-coloured skm 
Shone through the plumes ; its coils were twined 

within 
By many a swollen and knotted fold, and high 
And far, the neck receding lithe and thin, 
Sustained a crested head, which warily 
Shifted and glanced before the Eagle's steadfast eye. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



n:{ 



Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling 
With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed 
Incessantly — sometimes on high concealing 
Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed, 
Drooped through the air ; and still it shrieked and 
And casting back its eager head, with beak [wailed, 
And talon unremittingly assailed 
The wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek 
Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak. 



What life, what power, was kindled and arose 
Within the sphere of that appalling fray ! 
For, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes, 
A vapour like the sea's suspended spray 
Hung gathered : in- the void air, far away, [leap, 
Floated the shattered plumes ; bright scalfte did 
Where'er the Eagle's talons made their way\ 
Like sparks into the darkness ; — as they sweVp, 
Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous 
deep. 

XII. 

Swift chances in that combat — many a cheek, 
And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil ; 
Sometimes the Snake around his enemy's neck 
Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil, 
Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil, 
Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea 
Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil 
His adversary, who then reared on high 
His red and burning crest, radiant with victory. 



Then on the white edge of the bursting surge, 
Where they had sunk together, would the Snake 
Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge 
The wind with his wild writhings ; for to break 
That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake 
The strength of his unconquerable wings 
As in despair, and with his sinewy neck 
Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings, 
Then soar — as swift as smoke from a volcano 
springs. 

XIV. 

Wile baffled wilej and strength encountered 
Thus long, but unpre vailing : — the event [strength, 
Of that portentous fight appeared at length : 
Until the lamp of day was almost spent 
It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent, 
Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last 
Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent, 
With clang of wings and scream the Eagle past, 
Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast. 



And with it fled the tempest, so that ocean 
And earth and sky shone through the atmosphere — 
Only, it was strange to see the red commotion 
Of waves like mountains o'er the sinking sphere 
Of sunset sweep, and their fierce roar to hear 
Amid the calm : down the steep path I wound 
To the sea-shore — the evening was most clear 
And beautiful, and there the sea I found 
Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber 
bound. 



There was a Woman, beautiful as morning, 
Sitting beneath the rocks upon the sand 
Of the waste sea — fair as one flower adorning 
An icy wilderness — each delicate hand 
Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band 
Of her dark hair had fallen, and so she sate 
Looking upon the waves ; on the bare strand 
Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait, 
Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left desolate. 



It seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon 
That unimaginable fight, and now 
That her sweet eyes were weary of the sun, 
As brightly it illustrated her woe ; 
For in the tears which silently to flow 
Paused not, its lustre hung : she watching aye 
The foam- wreaths which the faint tide wove below 
Upon the spangled sands, groaned heavily, 
And after every groan looked up over the sea. 



And when she saw the wounded Serpent make 
His path between the waves, her lips grew pale, 
Pai'ted, and quivered ; the tears ceased to break 
' From her immovable eyes ; no voice of wail 
Escaped her ; but she rose, and on the gale 
Loosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair, 
Poured forth her voice ; the caverns of the vale 
That opened to the ocean, caught it there, 
And filled with silver sounds the overflowing air. 



She spake in language whose strange melody 
Might not belong to earth. I heard, alone, 
What made its music more melodious be, 
The pity and the love of every tone ; 
But to the Snake those accents sweet were known, 
His native tongue and hers : nor did he beat 
The hoar spray idly then, but winding on 
Through the green shadows of the waves that meet 
Near to the shore, did pause beside her snowy feet. 



Then on the sands the Woman sate again, 
And wept and clasped her hands, and all between, 
Renewed the unintelligible strain 
Of her melodious voice and eloquent mien ; 
And she unveiled her bosom, and the green 
And glancing shadows of the sea did play 
O'er its marmoreal depth : — one moment seen, 
For ere the next, the Serpent did obey 
Her voice, and, coiled in rest, in her embrace it lay. 



Then she arose, and smiled on me with eyes 
Serene yet sorrowing, like that planet fair, 
While yet the day-light lingereth in the skies 
Which cleaves with arrowy beams the dark -red air, 
And said : To grieve is wise, but the despair 
Was weak and vain which led thee here from sleep : 
This shalt thou know, and more, if thou dost dare 
With me and with this Serpent, o'er the deep, 
A voyage divine and strange, companionship to 
keep. 



;>» 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, 



Her voice was like the wildest, saddest tone, 
Yet sweet, of some loved voice heard long ago. 
1 wept. Shall this fair woman all alone 
Over the sea with that fierce Serpent go? 
His head is on her heart, and who can know 
How soon he may devour Ins feeble prey? — 
Such were my thoughts, when the tide 'gan to flow ; 
And that strange boat, like the moon's shade did 
Amid reflected stars that in the waters lay. [sway 

XXIII. 

A boat of rare device, which had no sail 
But its own curved prow of thin moonstone, 
Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail, 
To catch those gentlest winds which are not known 
To breathe, but by the steady speed alone 
With which it cleaves the sparkling sea ; and now 
We are embarked, the mountains hang and frown 
Over the starry deep that gleams below 
A vast and dim expanse, as o'er the waves we go- 



And as we sailed, a strange and awful tale 
That Woman told, like such mysterious dream 
As makes the slumberer's cheek with wonder pale ! 
'Twas midnight, and around, a shoreless stream, 
Wide ocean rolled, when that majestic theme 
Shrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent 
Her looks on mine ; those eyes a kindling beam 
Of love divine into my spirit sent, 
And, ere her lips could move, made the air eloquent. 



Speak not to me, but hear ! much shalt thou learn, 
Much must remain unthought, and more untold, 
In the dark Future's ever-flowing urn : 
Know then, that from the depth of ages old 
Two Powers o'er mortal things dominion hold, 
Ruling the world with a divided lot, 
Immortal, all-pervading, manifold, 
Twin Genii, equal Gods — when life and thought 
Sprang forth, they burst the womb of inessential 
Nought. 

XXVI. 

The earliest dweller of the world alone 
Stood on the verge of chaos : Lo ! afar 
O'er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone, 
Sprung from the depth of its tempestuous jar : 
A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star 
Mingling their beams in combat— as he stood 
All thoughts within his mind waged mutual war, 
In dreadful sympathy — when to the flood 
That fair star fell, he turned and shed his brother's 
blood. 

XXVII. 

Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit of evil, 
One Power of many shapes which none may know, 
One Shape of many names ; the Fiend did revel 
In victory, reigning o'er a world of woe, 
For the new race of man went to and fro, 
Famished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild, 
And hating good — for his immortal foe, 
He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild, 
To a dire Snake, with man and beast unreconciled. 



The darkness lingering o'er the dawn of things, 
Was Evil's breath and life : this made him strong 
To soar aloft with overshadowing wings ; 
And the great Spirit of Good did creep among 
The nations of mankind, and every tongue 
Cursed, and blasphemed him as he past ; for none 
Knew good from evil, though their names were hung 
In mockery o'er the fane where many a groan, 
As King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend 
did own. 



The fiend, whose name was Legion ; Death, Decay, 
Earthquake and Blight, and Want, and Madness 
Winged and wan diseases, an array [pale, 

Numerous as leaves that strew the autumnal gale ; 
Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil 
Of food and mirth, hiding his mortal head ; 
And, without whom all these might nought avail, 
Fear, Hatred, Faith, and Tyranny, who spread 
Those subtle nets which snare the living and the 
dead. 



His spirit is their power, and they his slaves 
In air, and light, and thought, and language dwell ; 
And keep their state from palaces to graves, 
In all resorts of men — invisible, 
But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell, 
To tyrant or impostor bids them rise, 
Black winged demon forms — whom, from the hell, 
His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies, 
He loosens to their dark and blasting ministries. 



In the world's youth his empire was as firm 
As its foundations — soon the Spirit of Good, 
Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm, 
Sprang from the billows of the formless flood, 
Which shrank and fled; and with that fiend of blood 
Renewed the doubtful war — thrones then first 

shook, 
And earth's immense and trampled multitude, 
In hope on their own powers began to look, 
And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine 

forsook. 

XXXII. 

Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages, 
In dream, the golden-pinioned Genii came, 
Even where they slept amid the night of ages 
Steeping their hearts in the divinest flame 
Which thy breath kindled, Power of holiest name ! 
And oft in cycles since, when darkness gave 
New weapons to thy foe, their sunlike fame 
Upon the combat shone — a light to save, [grave. 
Like Paradise spread forth beyond the shadowy 

XXXIII. 

Such is this conflict — when mankind doth strive 
With its oppressors in a strife of blood, 
Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive ; 
And in each bosom of the multitude 
Justice and truth, with custom's hydra brood, 
Wage silent war; — when priests and kings dissem- 
In smiles or frowns their fierce disquietude, [hie 
When round pure hearts, a host of hopes assemble, 
The Snake and Eagle meet — the world's founda- 
tions tremble ! 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Thou hast beheld that fight — when to thy home 
Thou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears ; 
Though thou may 'st hear that earth is now become 
The tyrant's garbage, which to his compeers, 
The vile reward of their dishonoured years, 
He will dividing give — The victor Fiend 
Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears 
His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend 
An impulse swift and sure to his approaching end. 



List, stranger, list ! mine is a human form,[now ! 
Like that thou wearest — touch me — shrink not 
My hand thou feel'st is not a ghost's, but warm 
With human blood. — 'Twas many years ago, 
Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know 
The secrets of this wondrous world, when deep 
My heart was pierced with sympathy, for woe 
Which could not be mine own— and thought did keep 
In dream, unnatural watch beside an infant's sleep. 



Woe could not be mine own, since far from men 
I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child, 
By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen ; 
And near the waves, and through the forests wild, 
I roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled, 
For I was calm while tempest shook the sky : 
But, when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled, 
I wept sweet tears, yet too tumultuously 
For peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstacy. 

xxxvii. 
These were forebodings of my fate. — Before 
A woman's heart beat in my virgin breast, 
It had been nurtured in divinest lore : 
A dying poet gave me books, and blest 
With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest 
In which I watched him as he died away — 
A youth with hoary hair — a fleeting guest 
Of our lone mountains — and this lore did sway 
My spirit like a storm, contending there alway. 



Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold, 
I knew, but not, methinks, as others know, 
For they weep not ; and Wisdom had unrolled 
The clouds which hide the gulf of mortal woe : 
To few can she that warning vision show, 
For I loved all things with intense devotion ; 
So that when Hope's deep source in fullest flow, 
Like earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean 
Of human thoughts — mine shook beneath the wide 
emotion. 

XXXIX. 

When first the living blood through all these veins 
Kindled a thought in sense, great France sprang 

forth 
And seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains 
Which bind in woe the nations of the earth. 
I saw, and started from my cottage hearth ; 
And to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness 
Shrieked, till they caught immeasurable mirth — 
And laughed in light and music : soon, sweet 

madness [sadness. 

Was poured upon my heart, a soft and thriling 



Deep slumber fell on me ; — my dreams were fire, 
Soft and delightful thoughts did rest and hover 
Like shadows o'er my brain ; and strange desire, 
The tempest of a passion, raging over 
My tranquil soul, its depths with light did cover, 
Which past ; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far 
Came — then I loved ; but not a human lover ! 
For when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star 
Shone through the woodbine wreaths which round 
my casement were. 

XLI. 

'Twas like an eye which seemed to smile on me. 
I watched till, by the sun made pale, it sank 
Under the billows of the heaving sea ; 
But from its beams deep love my spirit drank, 
And to my brain the boundless world now shrank 
Into one thought — one image — yea, for ever ! 
Even like the day's-spring, poured on vapours dank, 
The beams of that one star did shoot and quiver 

Through my benighted mind — and were extin- 
guished never. 

xLir. 
The day past thus : at night, methought in dream 
A shape of speechless beauty did appear ; 
It stood like light on a careering stream 
Of golden clouds which shook the atmosphere ; 
A winged youth, his radiant brow did wear 
The Morning Star : a wild dissolving bliss 
Over my frame he breathed, approaching near, 
And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness 

Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering 
kiss, 

XL1II. 

And said : A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden, 
How wilt thou prove thy worth ? Then j oy and sleep 
Together fled ; my soul was deeply laden, 
And to the shore I went to muse and weep ; 
But as I moved over my heart did creep 
A joy less soft, but more profound and strong 
Than my sweet dream ; and it forbade to keep 
The path of the sea-shore : that Spirit's tongue 
Seemed whispering in my heart, and bore my steps 
along. 

XLIV. 

How, to that vast and peopled city led, 
Which was a field of holy warfare then, 
I walked among the dying and the dead, 
And shared in fearless deeds with evil men, 
Calm as an angel in the dragon's den — 
How I braved death for liberty and truth, [when 
And spurned at peace, and power, and fame ; and 
Those hopes had lost the glory of their youth, 

How sadly I returned— might move the hearer's 
ruth: 

xlv. 
Warm tears throng fast ! the tale may not be said — 
Know then, that when this grief had been subdued, 
I was not left, like others, cold and dead ; 
The Spirit whom I loved in solitude 
Sustained his child : the tempest-shaken wood, 
The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night — 
These were his voice, and well I understood 
His smile divine when the calm sea was bright 

With silent stars, and Heaven was breathless with 
delijrht. 



rx; 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM 



In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers, 
Whenthedim nights were moonless, have I known 
bich no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers 
When thought revisits them: — know thou alone, 
That alter many wondrous veal's were flown, 
1 was awakened by a shriek of woe ; 
And over me a mystic robe was thrown, 
By viewless hands, and a bright star did glow 
Before my steps — the Snake then met his mortal foe. 



Thou fear's! not then the Serpent on thy heart I 

Fear it ! she said with brief and passionate cry, 
And spake no more : that silence made me start — 
I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly, 
Swift as a eloud between the sea and sky, 
Beneath the rising moon seen far away ; 
Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high 
Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay 
On the still waters, — these we did approach alway. 



And swift and swifter grew the vessel's motion, 
So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain — 
Wild, music woke me : we had past the ocean 
Which girds the pole, Nature's remotest reign — 
And we glode fast o'er a pellucid plain 
Of waters, azure with the noon-tide day. 
Ethereal mountains shone around — a Fane 
Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay 
On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away. 



It was a Temple, such as mortal hand 
Has never built, nor ecstacy, or dream, 
Reared in the cities of enchanted land : 
'Twas likest Heaven, ere yet day's purple streak 
Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam 
Of the unrisen moon among the clouds 
Is gathering — when with many a golden beam 
The thronging constellations rush in crowds, 
Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods. 



Like what may be conceived of this vast oTome, 
When from the depths which thought can seldom 
Genius beholds it rise, his native home, [pierce 
Girt by the deserts of the Universe, 
Yet, nor in painting's fight, or mightier verse, 
Or sculpture's marble language, can invest 
That shape to mortal sense — such glooms immerse 
That incommunicable sight, and rest 
Upon the labouring brain and over-burthened ■ 
breast. 



Winding among the lawny islands fair, 
Whose bloomy forests starred the shadowy deep, 
The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair 
Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep, 
Encircling that vast Fane's aerial heap : 
We disembarked, and through a portal wide 
We passed — whose roof of moonstone carved, did 
A glimmering o'er the forms on every side, [keep 
Sculptures like life and thought ; immoveable, 
deep-eyed. 



We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof [sheen 
Was diamond, which had drunk the lightning's 
In darkness, and now poured it through the woof 
Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen 
Its blinding splendour — through such veil was seen 
That work of subtlest power, divine and rare ; 
Orb above orb, with starry shapes between, 
And horned moons, and meteors strange and fair, 
On night-black columns poised — one hollow hemi- 
sphere ! 

LIII. 

Ten thousand columns in that quivering light 
Distinct — between whose shafts wound far away 
The long and labyrinthine aisles — more bright 
With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day ; 
And on the jasper walls around, there lay 
Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought, 
Which did the Spirit's history display ; 
A tale of passionate change, divinely taught, 
Which, in their winged dance, unconscious Genii 
wrought. 

L1V. 

Beneath, there sate on many a sapphire throne, 
The great, who had departed from mankind, 
A mighty Senate ; some whose white hair shone 
Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful, and blind. 
Some, female forms, whose gestures beamed with 

mind ; 

And ardent youths, and children bright and fair ; 

And some had lyres whose strings were intertwined 

With pale and clinging flames, which ever there 

Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the 

crystal air. 

LV. 

One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne, 
Reared on a pyramid like sculptured flame, 
Distinct with circling steps which rested on 
Their own deep fire — soon as the woman came 
Into that hall, she shrieked the Spirit's name 
And fell ; and vanished slowiy from the sight. 
Darkness arose from her dissolving frame, 
Which gathering, filled that dome of woven light, 
Blotting its sphered stars with supernatural night. 



Then first two glittering lights were seen to glide 
In circles on the amethystine floor, 
Small serpent eyes trailing from side to side, 
Like meteors on a river's grassy shore, 
They round each other rolled, dilating more 
And more — then rose, commingling into one, 
One clear and mighty planet hanging o'er 
A cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown 
Athwart the glowing steps and the crystalline throne. 



The cloud which rested on that cone of flame 
Was cloven ; beneath the planet sate a Form, 
Fairer than tongue can speak or thought may 

frame, 
The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm 
Flowed forth, and did with softest light inform 
The shadowy dome, the sculptures, and the state 
Of those assembled shapes — with clinging charm 
Sinking upon their hearts and mine — He sate 
Majestic yet nust mild — calm, yet compassionate. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



57 



Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw 
Over my brow— a hand supported me, 
Whose touch was magic strength : an eye of blue 
Looked into mine, like moonlight, soothingly ; 
And a voice said — Thou must a listener be 
This day — two mighty spirits now return, 
Like birds of calm, from the world's raging sea, 
They pour fresh light from Hope's immortal urn ; 
A tale of human power — despair not — list and 
learn ! 

LIX. 

I looked, and lo ! one stood forth eloquently, 
His eyes were dark and deep, and the clear brow 
Which shadowed them was like the morning sky, 
The cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow 
Through the bright air, the soft winds as they blow 
Wake the green world — his gestures did obey 
The oracular mind that made his features glow, 
And where his curved lips half open lay, 
Passion's divinest stream had made impetuous way. 



Beneath the darkness of his outspread hair 
He stood thus beautiful : but there was One 
Who sate beside him like his shadow there, 
And held his hand — far lovelier — she was known 
To be thus fair, by the few lines alone 
Which through her floating locks and gathered 
Glances of soul-dissolving glory, shone : — [cloke, 
None else beheld her eyes — in him they woke 
Memories which found a tongue, as thus he silence 
broke. 



CANTO II. 

i. 
The star-light smile of children, the sweet looks 
Of women, the fair breast from which I fed, 
The murmur of the unreposing brooks, 
And the green light which, shifting overhead, 
Some tangled bower of vines around me shed, 
The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers, 
The lamp-light through the rafters cheer ly spread, 
And on the twining flax — in life's young hours 

These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit's folded 
powers. 

n. 
In Argolis beside the echoing sea, 
Such impulses within my mortal frame 
Arose, and they were dear to memory, 
Like tokens of the dead : — but others came 
Soon, in another shape : the wondrous fame 
Of the past world, the vital words and deeds 
Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame, 
Traditions dark and old, whence evil creeds 

Start forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison 
feeds. 

in. 
I heard, as all have heard, the various story 
Of human life, and wept unwilling tears. 
Feeble historians of its shame and glory, 
False disputants on all its hopes and fears, 
Victims who worshipped ruin, — chroniclers 
Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state; 
Yet flattering power had given its ministers 
A throne of judgment in the grave — 'twas fate, 

That among such as these my youth should seek its 
mate. 



The land in which I lived, by a fell bane 
Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side, 
And stabled in our homes, — until the chain 
Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide 
That blasting curse men had no shame — all vied 
In evil, slave and despot ; fear with lust 
Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied, 
Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust, 

Which on the paths of men their mingling poison 
thrust. 

v. 
Earth,our bright home,its m ountains and its waters, 
And the ethereal shapes which are suspended 
Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters, 
The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended 
The colours of the air since first extended 
It cradled the young world, none wandered forth 
To see or feel : a darkness had descended 
On every heart : the light which shows its worth, 

Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its 
birth. 

VI. 

This vital world, this home of happy spirits, 
Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind, 
All that despair from murdered hope inherits 
They sought, and in their helpless misery blind, 
A deeper prison and heavier chains did find, 
And stronger tyrants : — a dark gulf before, 
The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned ; behind, 
Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore 
On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch 
from shore. 



Out of that Ocean's wrecks had Guilt and Woe 
Framed a dark dwelling for their homeless 

thought, 
And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro 
Glide o'er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought 
The worship thence which they each other taught. 
Well might men loathe their life, well might they 

turn 
Even to the ills again from which they sought 
Such refuge after death ! — well might they learn 
To gaze on this fair world with hopeless uncon- 

r»prn ! 



For they all pined in bondage ; body and soul, 
Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent 
Before one Power, to which supreme control 
Over their will by their own weakness lent, 
Made all its many names omnipotent ; 
All symbols of things evil, all divine ; 
And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent 
The air from all its fanes, did intertwine 
Imposture's impious toils round each discordant 
shrine. 

IX. 

I heard, as all have heard, fife's various story, 
And in no careless heart transcribed the tale ; 
But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary 
In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made 
By famine, from a mother's desolate wail [pale 
O'er her polluted child, from innocent blood 
Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale 
With the heart's warfare ; did I gather food 
To feed my many thoughts : — a tameless multitude 



TIIK RKVOLT OF ISLAM. 



1 wandered through the wrecks of days departed 

Far by the desolated shore, when even 

O'er the still sea and jagged islets darted 

The light of moonrise ; in the northern Heaven, 

Among the elonds near the horizon driven, 
The mountains lay beneath one planet pale ; 
Around me broken tombs and columns riven 
Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale 
Waked in those rums grey its everlasting wail ! 



I knew not who had framed these wonders then, 
Nor had I heard the story of their deeds ; 
But dwellings of a race of mightier men, 
And monuments of less ungentle creeds 
Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds 
The language which they speak ; and now, to me 
The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds, 
The bright stars shining in the breathless sea, 
Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mystery. 



Such man has been, and such may yet become ! 
Aye, wiser, greater, gentler, even than they 
Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome 
Have stamped the sign of power — I felt the sway 
Of the vast stream of ages bear away 
My floating thoughts — my heart beat loud and 
Even as a storm let loose beneath the ray [fast — 
Of the still moon, my spirit onward past 
Beneath truth's steady beams upon its tumult cast. 



It shall be thus no more ! too long, too long, 
Sons of the glorious dead ! have ye lain bound 
In darkness and in ruin. — Hope is strong, 
Justice and Truth their winged child have found — 
Awake ! arise ! until the mighty sound 
Of your career shall scatter in its gust 
The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground 
Hide the last altar's unregarded dust, 

Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious 
trust. 

xrv. 
It must be so — I will arise and waken 
The multitude, and like a sulphurous hill, 
Which on a sudden from its snows had shaken 
The swoon of ages, it shall burst, and fill 
The world with cleansing fire ; it must, it will — 
It may not be restrained ! — and who shall stand 
Amid the rocking earthquake stedfast still, 
But Laon % on high Freedom's desert land 

A tower whose marble walls the leagued storms 
withstand ! 



One summer night, in commune with the hope 
Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins grey 
I watched, beneath the dark sky's starry cope ; 
And ever from that hour upon me lay 
The burthen of this hope, and night or day, 
In vision or in dream, clove to my breast : 
Among mankind, or when gone far away 
To the lone shores and mountains, 'twas a guest, 
Which followed where I fled, and watched when 1 
did rest. 



These hopes found words through which my spirit 
To weave a bondage of such sympathy [sought 
As might create some response to the thought 
Which ruled me now — and as the vapours lie 
Bright in the outspread morning's radiancy, 
So were these thoughts invested with the light 
Of language ; and all bosoms made reply 
On which its lustre streamed, whene'er it might 
Thro' darkness wide and deep those tranced spirits 
smite. 

XVII. 

Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim, 
And oft I thought to clasp my own heart's brother, 
When I could feel the listener's senses swim, 
And hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother 
Even as my words evoked them — and another, 
And yet another, I did fondly deem, 
Felt that we all were sons of one great mother ; 
And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem, 
As to awake in grief from some delightful dream. 



Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth 
Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep, 
Did Laon and his friend on one grey plinth, 
Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and 
Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep : [leap, 
And that his friend was false, may now be said 
Calmly — that he like other men could weep 
Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread 
Snares for that guileless heart which for his own 
had bled. 

XIX. 

Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow, 
I must have sought dark respite from its stress 
In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow — 
For to tread life's dismaying wilderness 
Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless, 
Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind, 
Is hard — but I betrayed it not, nor less 
With love that scorned return, sought to unbind 
The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom 
blind. 

XX. 

With deathless minds, which leave where they have 
A path of fight, my soul communion knew; [past 
Till from that glorious intercourse, at last, 
As from a mine of magic store, I drew 
Words which were weapons ; — round my heart 

there grew 
The adamantine armour of their power, 
And from my fancy wings of golden hue 
Sprang forth — yet not alone from wisdom's tower, 
A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore. 



An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes 
Were load-stars of delight, which drew me home 
When I might wander forth ; nor did I prize 
Aught human thing beneath Heaven's mighty 

dome 
Beyond this child : so when sad hours were come, 
And baffled hope like ice still clung to me, 
Since kin were cold, and friends had now become 
Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be, 
Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



What wert thou then ? A child most infantine, 
Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age 
In all but its sweet looks and mien divine ; 
Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage 
A patient warfare thy young heart did wage, 
When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought, 
Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage 
To overflow with tears, or converse fraught 
With passion, o'er their depths its fleeting light 
had wrought. 



She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, 
A power, that from its objects scarcely drew 
One impulse of her being — in her lightness 
Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew 
Which wanders through the waste air's pathless 
To nourish some far desert ; she did seem [blue, 
Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, 
Like the bright shade of some immortal dream 
Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of 
life's dark stream. 



As mine own shadow was this child to me, 
A second self, far dearer and more fair ; 
Which clothed in undissolving radiancy 
All those steep paths which languor and despair 
Of human things had made so dark and bare, 
But which I trod alone — nor, till bereft 
Of friends, and overcome by lonely care, 
Knew I what solace for that loss was left, 
Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was 
cleft. 



Once she was dear, now she was all I had 
To love in human life — this playmate sweet, 
This child of twelve years old — so she was made 
My sole associate, and her willing feet 
Wandered with mine where earth and ocean meet, 
Beyond the aerial mountains whose vast cells 
The unreposing billows ever beat, 
Through forests wide and old, and lawny dells, 
Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald 
wells. 



And warm and light I felt her clasping hand 
When twined in mine : she followed where I went, 
Through the lone paths of our immortal land. 
It had no waste, but some memorial lent 
Which strung me to my toil — some monument 
Vital with mind : then Cythna by my side, 
Until the bright and beaming day were spent, 
Would rest, with looks entreating to abide, 
Too earnest and too sweet ever to be denied. 

XXVIF. 

And soon I could not have refused her — thus 
For ever, day and night, we two were ne'er 
Parted, but when brief sleep divided us : 
And, when the pauses of the lulling air 
Of noon beside the sea had made a lair 
For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept, 
And I kept watch over her slumbers there, 
While, as the shifting visions over her swept, 
Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and 
wept. 



XXVIII. 

And, in the murmur of her dreams, was heard 
Sometimes the name of Laon : — suddenly 
She would arise, and, like the secret bird 
Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky 
With her sweet accents — a wild melody ! 
Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, 

strong 
The source of passion, whence they rose to be 
Triumphant strains, which, like a spirit's tongue, 
To the enchanted waves that child of glory sung. 



Her white arms lifted through the shadowy stream 
Of her loose hair — oh, excellently great 
Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme 
Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate 
Amid the calm which rapture doth create 
After its tumult, her heart vibrating, 
Her spirit o'er the ocean's floating state 
From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing 
Of visions that were mine, beyond its utmost 
spring. 



For, before Cythna loved it, had my song 
Peopled with thoughts the boundless universe, 
A mighty congregation, which were strong 
Where'er they trod the darkness to disperse 
The cloud of that unutterable curse 
Which clings upon mankind : — all things became 
Slaves to my holy and heroic verse, 
Earth, sea, and sky, the planets, life, and fame, 
And fate, or whate'er else binds the world's won- 
drous frame. 



And this beloved child thus felt the sway 
Of my conceptions, gathering like a cloud 
The very wind on which it rolls away : 
Hers too were all my thoughts, ere yet, endowed 
With music and with light, their fountains flowed 
In poesy ; and her still and earnest face, 
Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed 
Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace, 
Watching the hopes which there her heart had 
learned to trace. 



In me, communion with tkis purest being 
Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise 
In knowledge, which in hers mine own mind seeing, 
Left in the human world few mysteries : 
How without fear of evil or disguise 
Was Cythna ! — what a spirit strong and mild, 
Which death, or pain, or peril, could despise, 
Yet melt in tenderness ! what genius wild, 
Yet mighty, was inclosed within one simple child ! 



New lore was this — old age with its grey hair, 
And wrinkled legends of unworthy things, 
And icy sneers, is nought : it cannot dare 
To burst the chains which life for ever flings 
On the entangled soul's aspiring wings, 
3o is it cold and cruel, and is made 
The careless slave of that dark power which brings 
Evil, like blight on man, who, still betrayed, 
Laughs o'er the grave in which his living hopes 
are laid. 



THE UK VOLT OF IS!. A.M. 



Nor are the strong and the severe to keep 
The empire of the world : thus Cythna taught 
Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep, 
Unconscious of the power through which she 
The woof of such intelligible thought, [wrought 
As from the tranquil strength which cradled lay 
In her smile-peopled rest, my spirit sought 
Why the deceiver and the slave has sway 
O'er heralds so divine of truth's arising day. 



Within that fairest form, the female mind 
Untainted by the poison clouds which rest 
On the dark world, a sacred home did find : 
But else, from the wide earth's maternal breast, 
Victorious Evil, which had dispossest 
All native power, had those fair children torn, 
And made them slaves to soothe his vile unrest, 
And minister to lust its joys forlorn, 
Till they had learned to breathe the atmosphere of 
scorn. 

XXXVI. 

This misery was but coldly felt, till she 
Became my only friend, who had indued 
My purpose with a wider sympathy ; 
Thus, Cythna mourned with me the servitude 
In which the half of humankind were mewed, 
Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves : 
She mourned that grace and power were thrown 
To the hyena lust, who, among graves, [as food 
Over his loathed meal, laughing in agony, raves. 



And I, still gazing on that glorious child, 

Even as these thoughts flushed o'er her : — 

" Cythna sweet, 
Well with the world art thou unreconciled ; 

/Never will peace and human nature meet, 
Till free and equal man and woman greet 
Domestic peace ; and ere this power can make 
In human hearts its calm and holy seat, 
This slavery must be broken" — as I spake, 

From Cythna's eyes a light of exultation brake. 



She replied earnestly : — " It shall be mine, 
This task, mine, Laon ! — thou hast much to gain ; 
Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna's pride repine, 
If she should lead a happy female train 
To meet thee over the rejoicing plain, 
When myriads at thv call shall throng around 
The Golden City."— Then the child did strain 
My arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound 
Her own about my neck, till some reply she found. 



I smiled, and spake not. — " Wherefore dost thou 
At what I say ? Laon, I am not weak, [smile 
And, though my cheek might become pale the 
With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek [while, 
Through their array of banded slaves to wreak 
Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought 
It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek 
To scorn and shame, and this beloved spot 
A nd thee, deal est friend, to leave and murmur not. 



" Whence came I what I am ? Thou, Laon, knowest 
How a young child should thus undaunted be ; 
Methinks, it is a power which thou bestowest, 
Through which I seek, by most resembling thee, 
So to become most good, and great, and free ; 
Yet far beyond this Ocean's utmost roar 
In towers and huts are many like to me, 
Who, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore 
As I have learnt from them, like me would fear 
no more. 

XLI. 

" Thinkest thou that I shall speak unskilfully, 
And none will heed me ? I remember now, 
How once, a slave in tortures doomed to die, 
Was saved, because in accents sweet and low 
He sang a song bis Judge loved long ago, 
As he was led to death. — All shall relent [flow, 
Who hear me — tears as mine have flowed, shall 
Hearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent 
As renovates the world ; a will omnipotent ! 



" Yes, I will tread Pride's golden palaces, 
Through Penury's roofless huts and squalid cells 
Will I descend, where'er in abjectness 
Woman with some vile slave her tyrant dwells, 
There with the music of thine own sweet spells 
Will disenchant the captives, and will pour 
For the despairing, from the crystal wells 
Of thy deep spirit, reason's mighty lore, 
And power shall then abound, and hope arise once 
more. 



3^ Can man be free if woman be a slave ? [air 

Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless 
To the corruption of a closed grave ! [bear 

Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to 
Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare 
To trample their oppressors ? In their home 
Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would 

wear 
The shape of woman — hoary crime would come 

Behind, and fraud rebuild religion's tottering dome. 



" I am a child : — I would not yet depart. 
When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp 
Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart, 
Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp 
Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp 
Of ages leaves their limbs — no ill may harm 
Thy Cythna ever — truth its radiant stamp 
Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm 
Upon her children's brow, dark falsehood to disarm. 



" Wait yet awhile for the appointed day — 
Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand 
Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean grey ; 
Amid the dwellers of this lonely land 
I shall remain alone — and thy command 
Shall then dissolve the world's unquiet trance, 
And, multitudinous as the desert sand 
Borne on the storm, its millions shall advance, 
Thronging round thee, the light of their deliverance 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



bl 



" Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain, 
Which from remotest glens two warring winds 
Involve in fire, which not the loosened fountain 
Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds 
Of evil catch from our uniting minds [then 

The spark which must consume them ; — Cythna 
Will have cast off the impotence that binds 
Her childhood now, and through the paths of men 

Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the 
serpent's den. 

xlvii. 
" We part ! — O Laon, I must dare, nor tremble, 
To meet those looks no more ! — Oh, heavy stroke! 
Sweet brother of my soul ; can I dissemble 
The agony of this thought ? " — As thus she spoke 
The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke, 
And in my arms she hid her beating breast. 
I remained still for tears — sudden she woke 
As one awakes from sleep, and wildly prest 

My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possest. 



" We part to meet again — but yon blue waste, 
Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess 
Within whose happy silence, thus embraced 
We might survive all ills in one caress : 
Nor doth the grave — I fear 'tis passionless — 
Nor yon cold vacant Heaven : — we meet again 
Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless 
Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain 
When these dissevered bones are trodden in the 
plain." 

XLIX. 

I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now 
The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep, 
Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow ; 
So we arose, and by the star-light steep 
Went homeward — neither did we speak nor weep, 
But pale, were calm. — With passion thus subdued, 
Like evening shades that o'er the mountains creep, 
We moved towards our home ; where, in this mood, 
Each from the other sought refuge in solitude. 



CANTO III. 

i. [slumber 

What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely 
That night, I know not ; but my own did seem 
As if they might ten thousand years outnumber 
Of waking life, the visions of a dream, 
Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream 
Of mind ; a boundless chaos wild and vast, 
Whose limits yet were never memory's theme : 
And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds past, 
Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain 



Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace 
More time than might make grey the infant world, 
Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space : 
When the third came, like mist on breezes curled, 
From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled : 
Methought, upon the threshold of a cave 
I sate with Cythna ; drooping briony, pearled 
With dew from the wild streamlet's shattered wave, 
Hung, where we sate, to taste the joys which Nature 
gave. 



We lived a day as we were wont to live, 
But nature had a robe of glory on, 
And the bright air o'er every shape did weave 
Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone, 
The leafless bough among the leaves alone, 
Had being clearer than its own could be, 
And Cythna's pure and radiant self was shown 
In this strange vision, so divine to me, 
That if I loved before, now love was agony. 



Mornfled,noon came,e vening,then nightdescended, 
And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere 
Of the calm moon — when, suddenly was blended 
With our repose a nameless sense of fear ; 
And from the cave behind I seemed to hear 
Sounds gathering upwards ! — accents incomplete, 
And stifled shrieks, — and now, more near and 
A tumult and a rush of thronging feet [near, 
The cavern's secret depths beneath the earth did 
beat. 

v. 
The scene was changed, and away, away, away ! 
Through the air and over the sea we sped, 
And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay, 
And the winds bore me ; — through the darkness 



Around, the gaping earth then vomited 
Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung 
Upon my flight ; and ever as we fled, 
They plucked at Cythna — soon to me then clung 
A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams 
among. 

VI. 

And I lay struggling in the impotence 
Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound, 
Though, still deluded, strove the tortured sense 
To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound 
Which in the light of morn was poured around 
Our dwelling — breathless, pale, and unaware 
I rose, and all the cottage crowded found 
With armed men, whose glittering swords were 

bare, 
And whose degraded limbs the tyrant's garb did 

wear. 

VII. 

And ere with rapid lips and gathered brow # 
I could demand the cause — a feeble shriek — 
It was a feeble shriek, faint, far, and low, 
Arrested me — my mien grew calm and meek, 
And, grasping a small knife, I went to seek 
That voice among the crowd — 'twas Cythna's 

cry! 
Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak 
Its whirlwind rage : — so I past quietly 
Till I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did 

lie. 

VIII. 

I started to behold her, for delight 
And exultation, and a joyance free, 
Solemn, serene, and lofty, filled the light 
Of the calm smile with which she looked on me : 
So that I feared some brainless ecstacy, 
Wrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her — 
" Farewell ! farewell ! " she said, as I drew nigh 
" At first my peace was marred by this strange stir, 
Now I am calm as truth — its chosen minister. 



62 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM 



" Look not so, Lnon — say farewell in hope : 
These bloody men are but the slaves who bear 
Their mistress to her task — it was my scope 
The slavery where they drag me now, to share, 
And anion g captives willing chains to wear 
Awhile — the rest thou kuowest — return, dear 
Let our first triumph trample the despair [friend! 
Which would ensnare us now, for in the end, 
In victory or in death our hopes and fears must 
blend." 

X. 

These words had fallen on my unheeding ear, 
Whilst I had watched the motions of the crew 
With seeming careless glance ; not many were 
Around her, for their comrades just withdrew 
To guard some other victim — so I drew 
My knife, and with one impulse, suddenly 
All unaware three of their number slew, [cry 
And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud 
My countrymen invoked to death or liberty ! 



What followed then, I know not — for a stroke 
On my raised arm and naked head came down, 
Filling my eyes with blood — when I awoke, 
I felt that they had bound me in my swoon, 
And up a rock which overhangs the town, 
By the steep path were bearing me : below 
The plain was filled with slaughter, — overthrown 
The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow 
Of blazing roofs shone far o'er the white Ocean's 
flow. 



Upon that rock a mighty column stood, 
Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky, 
Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude 
Of distant seas, from ages long gone by, 
Had many a landmark ; o'er its height to fly 
Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast, 
Has power — and when the shades of evening he 
On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast 
i The sunken day-light far through the aerial waste. 



They bore me to a cavern in the hill 
Beneath that column, and unbound me there : 
And one did strip me stark ; and one did fill 
A vessel from the putrid pool ; one bare 
A lighted torch, and four with friendless care 
Guided my steps the cavern-paths along, 
Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair 
We wound, until the torches' fiery tongue 
Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung. 



They raised me to the platform of the pile, 
That column's dizzy height : — the grate of brass 
Through which they thrust me, open stood the 
As to its ponderous and suspended mass, [while, 
With chains which eat into the flesh, alas ! 
With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound : 
The grate, as they departed to repass, 
With horrid clangour fell, and the far sound 
Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom was 
drowned. 



The noon was calm and bright : — around that 
The overhanging sky and circling sea [column 
Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn 
The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me, 
So that I knew not my own misery : 
The islands and the mountains in the day 
Like clouds reposed afar ; and I could see 
The town among the woods below that lay, 
And the dark rocks which bound the bright and 
glassy bay. 

XVI. 

It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed 
Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone 
Swayed in the air : — so bright, that noon did breed 
No shadow in the sky beside mine own — 
Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone. 
Below the smoke of roofs involved in flame 
Rested like night, all else was clearly shown 
In the broad glare, yet sound to me none came, 
But of the living blood that ran within my frame. 



The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon ! 
A ship was lying on the sunny main ; 
Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon — 
Its shadow lay beyond — that sight again 
Waked, with its presence, in my tranced brain 
The stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold : 
I knew that ship bore Cythna o'er the plain 
Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold, 
And watched it with such thoughts as must remain 
untold. 



I watched, until the shades of evening wrapt 
Earth like an exhalation — then the bark 
Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapt. 
It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark : 
Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark 
Its path no more ! I sought to close mine eyes, 
But, like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark; 
I would have risen, but, ere that I could rise, 
My parched skin was split with piercing agonies. 



I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever 
Its adamantine links, that I might die : 
Liberty ! forgive the base endeavour, 
Forgive me, if, reserved for victory, 
The Champion of thy faith e'er sought to fly. — 
That starry night, with its clear silence, sent 
Tameless resolve which laughed at misery 
Into my soul — linked remembrance lent 
To that such power, to me such a severe content. 



To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair 
And die, I questioned not ; nor, though the Sun 
Its shafts of agony kindling through the air 
Moved over me, nor though in evening dun, 
Or when the stars their visible courses run, 
Or morning, the wide universe was spread 
In dreary calmness round me, did I shun 
Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead 
From ene faint hope whose flower a dropping poison 
shed. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



63 



Two days thus past — I neither raved nor died — 
Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion's nest 
Built in mine entrails ; I had spurned aside 
The water- vessel, while despair possest [uprest 
My thoughts, and now no drop remained ! The 
Of the third sun brought hunger — but the crust, 
Which had been left, was to my craving breast 
Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust, 
And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen 
rust. 

XXII. 

My brain began to fail when the fourth morn 
Burst o'er the golden isles — a fearful sleep, 
Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn 
Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep 
With whirlwind swiftness — a fall far and deep, — 
A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness — 
These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep 
Their watch in some dim enamel's loneliness, 
A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless ! 



The forms which peopled this terrific trance 
I well remember — like a quire of devils, 
Around me they involved a giddy dance ; 
Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels 
Of ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels, 
Foul, ceaseless shadows : — thought could not divide 
The actual world from these entangling evils, 
Which so bemocked themselves, that I descried 
All shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied. 



The sense of day and night, of false and true, 
Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst 
That darkness — one, as since that hour I knew, 
Was not a phantom of the realms accurst, 
Where then my spirit dwelt — but of the first 
I know not yet, was it a dream or no. 
But both, though not distincter, were immersed 
In hues which, when through memory's waste they 
flow, 
Make their divided streams more bright and rapid 



Methought that gate was lifted, and the seven 
Who brought me thither, four stiff corpses bare, 
And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven 
Hung them on high by the entangled hair : 
Swarthy were three — the fourth was very fair : 
As they retired, the golden moon upsprung, 
And eagerly, out in the giddy air, 
Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung 
Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses 
hung. 

XXVI. 

A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue, 
The dwelling of the many-coloured worm, 
Hung there, the white and hollow cheek I drew 
To my dry lips — what radiance did inform 
Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form? 
Alas, alas ! it seemed that Cythna's ghost 
Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm 
Within my teeth ! — a whirlwind keen as frost 
Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tost. 



Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane 
Arose, and bore me in its dark career 
Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane 
On the verge of formless space — it languished 
And, dying, left a silence lone and drear , [the re, 
More horrible than famine : — in the deep 
The shape of an old man did then appear, 
Stately and beautiful ; that dreadful sleep 
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake 
and weep. 

xxvin. 
And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw 
That column, and those corpses, and the moon, 
And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw 
My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon 
Of senseless death would be accorded soon ; — 
When from that stony gloom a voice arose, 
Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune 
The midnight pines ; the grate did then unclose, 
And on that reverend form the moonlight didrepose. 



He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled : 
As they were loosened by that Hermit old, 
Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled, 
To answer those kind looks. — He did enfold 
His giant arms around me to uphold 
My wretched frame, my scorched limbs he wound 
In linen moist and balmy, and as cold 
As dew to drooping leaves : — the chain, with sound 
Like earthquake, through the chasm of that steep 
stair did bound 



As, lifting me, it fell ! — What next I heard, 
Were billows leaping on the harbour bar, 
And the shrill sea- wind, whose breath idly stirred 
My hair ;— I looked abroad, and saw a star 
Shining beside a sail, and distant far 
That mountain and its column, the known mark 
Of those who in the wide deep wandering are, 
So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark, 
In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish 
bark. 



For now, indeed, over the salt sea billow 
I sailed : yet dared not look upon the shape 
Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow 
For my fight head was hollowed in his lap, 
And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap, 
Fearing it was a fiend : at last, he bent 
O'er me his aged face ; as if to snap 
Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent. 
And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent. 

xxxn. 
A soft and healing potion to my lips 
At intervals he raised — now looked on high, 
To mark if yet the starry giant dips 
His zone in the dim sea — now cheeringly, 
Though he said little, did he speak to me. 
" It is a friend beside thee — take good cheer, 
Poor victim, thou art now at liberty !" 
I joyed as those a human tone to hear, 
Who in cells deep and lone have languished many 
a vear. 



04 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



XXXIII. 

A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft 
Were Quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams, 

Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft 
The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams 
Of morn descended on the ocean-streams, 
And still that aged man, so grand and mild, 
Tended me, even as some sick mother seems 
To hang in hope over a dying child, 
Till in the azure East darkness again was piled. 

XXXIV. 

And then the night-wind, steaming from the shore, 
Sent odours dying sweet across the sea, 
And the swift boat the little waves which bore, 
Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly ; 
Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see 
The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove, 
As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee 
On sidelong wing into a silent cove, 
Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove. 



CANTO IV. 

r. 
The old man took the oars, and soon the bark 
Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone ; 
It was a crumbling heap whose portal dark 
With blooming ivy trails was overgrown ; 
Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown, 
And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood, 
Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown 
Within the walls of that great tower, which stood 

A changeling of man's art, nursed amid Nature's 
brood. 

ii, 
When <he old man his boat had anchored, 
He wound me in his arms with tender care, 
And very few but kindly words he said, 
And bore me through the tower adown a stair, 
Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear 
For many a year had fallen. — We came at last 
To a small chamber, which with mosses rare 
Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed 

Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced. 



The moon was darting through the lattices 
Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day — 
So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze, 
The old man opened them ; the moonlight lay 
Upon a lake whose waters wove their play 
Even to the threshold of that lonely home : 
Within was seen in the dim wavering ray, 
The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome 
Whose lore had made that sage all that he had 
become. 

IV. 

The rock-built barrier of the sea was past, — 
And I was on the margin of a lake, 
A lonely lake, amid the forests vast 
And snowy mountains : — did my spirit wake 
From sleep, as many-coloured as the snake 
That girds eternity ? in life and truth, 
Might not my heart its cravings ever slake ? 
Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth, 
And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and 
ruth ? 



Thus madness came again, — a milder madness. 
Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow 
With supernatural shades of clinging sadness ; 
That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe, 
By my sick couch was busy to and fro, 
Like a strong spirit ministrant of good : 
When I was healed, he led me forth to show 
The wonders of his sylvan solitude, 
And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood. 



He knew his soothing words to weave with 

skill 
From all my madness told : like mine own heart, 
Of Cythna would he question me, until 
That thrilling name had ceased to make me 

start, 
From his familiar lips — it was not art, 
Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke — 
When 'mid soft looks of pity, there would dart 
A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke 
When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral 



Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled, 
My thoughts their due array did re-assume 
Through the enchantments of that Hermit old ; 
Then I bethought me of the glorious doom 
Of those who sternly struggle to relume 
The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot, 
And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom 
Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought — 
That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted 
not. 

VIII. 

That hoary man had spent his livelong age 
In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp 
Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page, 
When they are gone into the senseless damp 
Of graves ! — his spirit thus became a lamp 
Of splendour, like to those on which it fed. 
Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp, 
Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led, 
And all the ways of men among mankind he read. 



(But custom maketh blind and obdurate 
\The loftiest hearts : — he had beheld the woe 
In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate 
Which made them abject would preserve them so ; 
And in such faith, some stedfast joy to know, 
He sought this cell : but, when fame went abroad 
That one in Argolis did undergo 
Torture for liberty, and that the crowd 

High truths from gifted lips had heard and under- 
stood, 

x. 
And that the multitude was gathering wide, 
His spirit leaped within his aged frame ; 
In lonely peace he could no more abide, 
But to the land on which the victor's flame 
Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came ; 
Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue 
Was as a sword of truth — young Laon's name 
Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung 

Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes 
among. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



65 



He came to the lone column on the rock, 
And with his sweet and mighty eloquence 
The hearts of those who watched it did unlock, 
And made them melt in tears of penitence. 
They gave him entrance free to bear me thence. 
" Since this," the old man said, " seven years are 
While slowly truth on thy benighted sense [spent, 
Has crept ; the hope which wildered it has lent, 
Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent. 



"Yes, from the records of my youthful state, 
And from the lore of bards and sages old, 
From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create 
Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold, 
Have I collected language to unfold 
Truth to my countrymen ; from shore to shore 
Doctrines of human power my words have told ; 
They have been heard, and men aspire to more 
Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore. 



" In secret chambers parents read, and weep, 
My writings to their babes, no longer blind ; 
And young men gather when their tyrants sleep, 
And vows of faith each to the other bind ; 
And marriageable maidens, who have pined 
With love, till life seemed melting through their 
A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now find ; [look, 
And every bosom thus is wrapt and shook, 
Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln moun- 
tain brook. 



" The tyrants of the Golden City tremble 
At voices which are heard about the streets ; 
The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble 
The lies of their own heart ; but when one meets 
Another at the shrine, he inly weets, 
Though he says nothing, that the truth is known ; 
Murderers are pale upon the judgment-seats, 
And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone, 
And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the 
Throne. 



" Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle 
Abound, for fearless love, and the pure law [deeds 
Of mild equality and peace succeeds 
To faiths which long have held the world in awe, 
Bloody, and false, and cold : — as whirlpools draw 
All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway 
Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw 
This hope, compels all spirits to obey, 
Which round thy secret strength now throng in 
wide array. 

XVI. 

" For I have been thy passive instrument "— - 
(As thus the old man spake, his countenance 
Gleamed on me like a spirit's) — " thou hast lent 
To me, to all, the power to advance 
Towards this unforeseen deliverance 
From our ancestral chains — ay, thou didst rear 
That lamp of hope on high, which time, nor chance, 
Nor change may not extinguish, and my share 
Of good was o'er the world its gathered beams to 
bear. 



" But I, alas ! am both unknown and old, 
And though the woof of wisdom I know well 
To dye in hues of language, I am cold 
In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell 
My manners note that I did long repel ; 
But Laon's name to the tumultuous throng 
Were like the star whose beams the waves compel 
And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue 
Were as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong. 



" Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length 
Wouldst rise ; perchance the very slaves would spare 
Their brethren and themselves; great is the 
Of words — for lately did a maiden fair, [strength 
Who from her childhood has been taught to bear 
The tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make 
Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear ; 
And with these quiet words — < for thine own sake 
I prithee spare me,' — did with ruth so take 



" All hearts, that even the torturer, who had bound 
Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled, 
Loosened her weeping then ; nor could be found 
One human hand to harm her — unassailed 
Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled 
In virtue's adamantine eloquence, [mailed, 

'Gainst scorn, and death, and pain, thus trebly 
And blending in the smiles of that defence. 
The Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence. 



" The wild-eyed women throng around her path : 
From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust 
Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath, 
Or the caresses of his sated lust, 
They congregate :— in her they put their trust ; 
The tyrants send their armed slaves to quell 
Her power ; — they, even like a thunder gust 
Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell 
Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs 
rebel. 



JL? Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach 
x To woman, outraged and polluted long ; 
Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach 
For those fair hands now free, while armed wrong 
Trembles before her look, though it be strong ; 
Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright, 
And matrons with their babes, a stately throng ! 
Lovers renew the vows which they did plight 

In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite. 



" And homeless orphans find a home near her, 
And those poor victims of the proud, no less, 
Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir, 
Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness : — 
In squalid huts, and in its palaces 
Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borne 
Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress 
All evil, and her foes relenting turn, 
And cast the vote of love in hope's abandoned 
urn. 



66 



THE KKVOLT OF ISLAM. 



" So in the populous City, a young maiden 
lias baffled Havoc of the prey which he 
Marks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladen 
Men make them anus to hurl down tyranny, 
False arbiter between the hound and free ; 

And o'er the land, in hamlets and in towns 
The multitudes collect tumultuously, 
And throng in arms ; hut tyranny disowns 
Their claim, ami gathers strength around its trem- 
bling thrones. 



" Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed 
The free cannot forbear — the Queen of Slaves, 
The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead, 
Custom, with iron mace points to the graves 
Where her own standard desolately waves 
Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings. 
Many yet stand in her array — * she paves 
Her path with human hearts/ and o'er it flings 
The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings. 



" There is a plain beneath the City's wall, 
Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast ; 
Millions there lift at Freedom's thrilling call 
Ten thousand standards wide ; they load the blast 
Which bears one sound of many voices past, 
And startles on his throne their sceptred foe : 
He sits amid his idle pomp aghast, 
And that his power hath past away, doth know — 
Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow ? 



" The tyrant's guards resistance yet maintain : 
Fearless, and fierce, and hard as beasts of blood; 
They stand a speck amid the peopled plain ; 
Carnage and ruin have been made their food 
From infancy — ill has become their good, 
And for its hateful sake their will has wove 
The chains which eat their hearts — the multitude 
Surrounding them, with words of human love, 
Seek from their own decay their stubborn minds 
to move. 



" Over the land is felt a sudden pause, 
As night and day those ruthless bands around 
The watch of love is kept : — a trance which awes 
The thoughts of men with hope — as when the sound 
Of whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and 

clouds confound, 
Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear 
Feels silence sink upon his heart — thus bound, 
The conqueror's pause, and oh ! may freemen ne'er 
Clasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer ! 



" If blood be shed, 'tis but a change and choice 
Of bonds, — from slavery to cowardice 
A wretched fall ! — uplift thy charmed voice, 
Pour on those evil men the love that lies 
Hovering within those spirit-soothing eyes — 
Arise, my friend, farewell ! " — As thus he spake, 
From the green earth lightly I did arise, 
As one out of dim dreams that doth awake, 
And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake. 



I saw my countenance reflected there ; — 
And then my youth fell on me like a wind 
Descending on still waters — my thin hair 
Was prematurely grey, my face was lined 
With channels, such as suffering leaves behind, 
Not age ; my brow was pale, but in my cheek 
And lips a flush of gnawing fire did find [speak 
Their food and dwelling ; though mine eyes might 
A subtle mind and strong within a frame thus weak. 



And though their lustre now was spent and faded, 
Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien 
The likeness of a shape for which was braided 
The brightest woof of genius, still was seen — 
One who, methought, had gone from the world's 
And left it vacant — 'twas her lover's face — [scene, 
It might resemble her — it once had been 
The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace 
Which her mind's shadow cast, left there a finger 
ing trace. 

XXXI. 

What then was I ? She slumbered with the dead. 
Glory and joy and peace, had come and gone. 
Doth the cloud perish, when the beams are fled 
Which steeped its skirts in gold? or dark, and lone, 
Doth it not through the paths of night unknown, 
On outspread wings of its own wind upborne 
Pour rain upon the earth ? the stars are shown, 
When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn 
Under the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn. 



Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man 
I left, with interchange of looks and tears, 
And lingering speech, and to the Camp began 
My way. O'er many a mountain chain which rears 
Its hundred crests aloft, my spirit bears 
My frame ; o'er many a dale and many a moor, 
And gaily now me seems serene earth wears 
The bloomy spring's star-bright investiture, 
A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure. 



My powers revived within me, and I went 
As one whom winds waft o'er the bending grass, 
Through many a vale of that broad continent. 
At night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass 
Before my pillow ; — my own Cythna was 
Not like a child of death, among them ever ; 
When I arose from rest, a woeful mass 
That gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever, 
As if the fight of youth were not withdrawn for ever. 



Aye, as I went, that maiden, who had reared 
The torch of Truth afar, of whose high deeds 
The Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard, 
Haunted my thoughts. — Ah, Hope its sickness feeds 
With whatsoe'er it finds, or flowers or weeds ! 
Could she be Cythna ? — Was that corpse a shade 
Such as self-torturing thought from madness 

breeds ? 
Why was this hope not torture ? yet it made 
A fight around my steps which would not ever fade. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



67 



CANTO V. 

i. 
Over the utmost hill at length I sped, 
A snowy steep : — the moon was hanging low 
Over the Asian mountains, and outspread 
The plain, the City, and the Camp, below, 
Skirted the midnight Ocean's glimmering flow, 
The City's moon-lit spires and myriad lamps, 
Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow, 
And fires blazed far amid the scattered camps, 
Like springs of flame, which burst where'er swift 
Earthquake stamps. 

n. 
All slept but those in watchful arms who stood, 
And those who sate tending the beacon's light, 
And the few sounds from that vast multitude 
Made silence more profound — Oh, what a might 
Of human thought was cradled in that night ! 
How many hearts impenetrably veiled 
Beat underneath its shade, what secret fight 
Evil and good, in woven passions mailed, 

Waged through that silent throng, a war that 
never failed ! 

m. 
And now the Power of Good held victory, 
So, through the labyrinth of many a tent, 
Among the silent millions who did he 
In innocent sleep, exultingly I went ; 
The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent 
From eastern morn the first faint lustre showed 
An armed youth — over his spear he bent 
His downward face. — " A friend !" I cried aloud, 

And quickly common hopes made freemen under- 
stood. 

IV. 

I sate beside him while the morning beam 
Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him 
Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme ! 
Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim : 
And all the while, methought, his voice did swim, 
As if it drowned in remembrance were 
Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim : 
At last, when daylight 'gan to fill the air, 

He looked on me, and cried in wonder, " Thou 
art here !" 

v. 
Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth 
In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found ; 
But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth, 
And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound, 
And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound, 
Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded. 
The truth now came upon me, on the ground 
Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded, 

Fell fast, and o'er its peace our mingling spirits 
brooded. 

VI. 

Thus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes 
We talked, a sound of sweeping conflict spread, 
As from the earth did suddenly arise ; 
From every tent, roused by that clamour dread, 
Our bands outsprung and seized their arms ; we sped 
Towards the sound : our tribes were gathering far, 
Those sanguine slaves amid ten thousand dead 
Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war, 
The gentle hearts whose power their lives had 
sought to spare. 



Like rabid snakes, that sting some gentle child 
Who brings them food, when winter false and fair 
Allures them forth with its cold smiles, so wild 
They rage among the camp ; — they overbear 
The patriot hosts — confusion, then despair 
Descends like night — when " Laon !" one did cry : 
Like a bright ghost from Heaven that shout did 

scare 
The slaves, and, widening through the vaulted sky, 
Seemed sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of 

victory. 



In sudden panic those false murderers fled, 
Like insect tribes before the northern gale : 
But, swifter still, our hosts encompassed 
Their shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale, 
Where even their fierce despair might nought avail, 
Hemmed them around ! — and then revenge and 
Made the high virtue of the patriots fail : [fear 
One pointed on his foe the mortal spear — 
I rushed before its point, and cried, " Forbear, 
forbear !" 

IX. 

The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted 
In swift expostulation, and the blood [gifted 

Gushed round its point : I smiled, and — "Oh ! thou 
With eloquence which shall not be withstood, 
Flow thus !" — I cried in joy, " thou vital flood, 
Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause 
For which thou wert aught worthy be subdued — 
Ah, ye are pale, — ye weep, — your passions pause, — 

'Tis well ! ye feel the truth of love's benignant laws, 
x. 
" Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain. 
Ye murdered them, I think, as they did sleep ! 
Alas, what have ye done % The slightest pain 
Which ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep ; 
But ye have quenched them — there were smiles 

to steep 
Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe ; 
And those whom love did set his watch to keep 
Around your tents truth's freedom to bestow, 

Ye stabbed as they did sleep — but they forgive ye 



" wherefore should ill ever flow from ill, 
And pain still keener pain for ever breed ? 
W r e all are brethren — even the slaves who kill 
For hire, are men ; and to avenge misdeed 
On the misdoer, doth but Misery feed 
With her own broken heart ! Earth, Heaven i 
And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed 
And all that lives, or is to be, hath given, 
Even as to thee have these done ill, and are 
forgiven. 

XII. 

" Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past 
Be as a grave which gives not up its dead 
To evil thoughts." — A film then overcast 
My sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled 
Freshly, swift shadows o'er mine eyes had shed. 
When I awoke, I lay 'mid friends and foes, 
And earnest countenances on me shed 
The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close 
My wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me 
to repose ; 

F 2 



THE aEVOLT OF [SLAM. 



A ml one, whose spear had pierced me, loaned beside 
With quivering lips and humid eyes : — and all 
Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide 
Cone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall 
In a strange land, round one whom they might call 
Their friend, their chief, their father, for essay 
Of peril, which had saved them from the thrall 
Of death, now suffering. Thus the vast array 
Of those fraternal bands were reconciled that day. 



Lifting the thunder of their acclamation 
Towards the City, then the multitude, 
And I among them, went in joy — a nation 
Made free by love ; — a mighty brotherhood 
Linked by a jealous interchange of good ; 
A glorious pageant, more magnificent 
Than kingly slaves, arrayed in gold and blood ; 
When they return from carnage, and are sent 
In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement. 



Afar, the City walls were thronged on high, 
And myriads on each giddy turret clung, 
And to each spire far lessening in the sky, 
Bright pennons on the idle winds were hung ; 
As we approached, a shout of joyance sprung 
At once from all the crowd, as if the vast 
And peopled Earth its boundless skies among 
The sudden clamour of delight had cast, 
When from before its face some general wreck 
had past. 

XVI. 

Our armies through the City's hundred gates 
Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair 
Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits, 
Throng from the mountains when the storms are 

there ; 
And, as we passed through the calm sunny air, 
A thousand flower- inwoven crowns were shed, 
The token flowers of truth and freedom fair, 
And fairest hands bound them on many a head, 
Those angels of love's heaven, that over all was 
spread. 

XVII. 

I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision : 
Those bloody bands so lately reconciled, 
Were, ever as they went, by the contrition 
Of anger turned to love from ill beguiled, 
And every one on them more gently smiled, 
Because they had done evil : — the sweet awe 
Ofsuchmildlooksmadetheirown hearts grow mild, 
And did with soft attraction ever draw 
Their spirits to the love of freedom's equal law. 



And they, and all, in one loud symphony 
My name with Liberty commingling, lifted, 
" The friend and the preserver of the free ! 
The parent of this joy !" and fair eyes, gifted 
With feelings caught from one who had uplifted 
The light of a great spirit, round me shone ; 
And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted 
Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun, — 
W here was that Maid ? I asked, but it was known 
of none. 



Laone was the name her love had chosen, 
I'm- she was nameless, and her birth none knew: 
Where was Laone now ? — The words were frozen 
Within my lips with fear ; but to subdue 
Such dreadful hope, to my great task was due, 
And when at length one brought reply, that she 
To-morrow would appear, I then withdrew 
To judge what need for that great throng might be, 
For now the stars came thick over the twilight sea. 



Yet need was none for rest or food to care, 
Even though that multitude was passing great, 
Since each one for the other did prepare 
All kindly succour — Therefore to the gate 
Of the Imperial House, now desolate, 
I passed, and there was found aghast, alone, 
The fallen Tyrant !— Silently he sate 
Upon the footstool of his golden throne, 
Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre 
shone. 

XXI. 

Alone, but for one child, who led before him 
A graceful dance : the only living thing 
Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him 
Flocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring 
In his abandonment ! — She knew the King 
Had praised her dance of yore, and now r she wove 
Its circles, aye weeping and murmuring 
'Mid her sad task of unregarded love, 
That to no smiles it might his speechless sadness 



She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet 
When human steps were heard: — he moved nor 

spoke, 
Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet 
The gaze of strangers. — Our loud entrance w r oke 
The echoes of the hall, which circling broke 
The calm of its recesses, — like a tomb 
Its sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke 
Of footfalls answered, and the twilight's gloom 
Lay like a charneFs mist within the radiant dome. 



The little child stood up when we came nigh ; 
Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan, 
But on her forehead and within her eye 
Lay beauty, which makes hearts that feed thereon 
Sick with excess of sweetness ; — on the throne 
She leaned. The King, with gathered brow and lips 
Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown 
With hue like that when some great painter dips 
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. 



She stood beside him like a rainbow braided 
Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast 
From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded. 
A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna's, cast 
One moment's light, which made my heart beat fast 
O'er that child's parted lips — a gleam of bliss, 
A shade of vanished days,— as the tears past 
Which wrapt it, even as with a father's kiss 
I pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



OG 



The sceptred wretch then from that solitude 
I drew, and of his change compassionate, 
With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood. 
But he, while pride and fear held deep debate, 
With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate 
Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare : 
Pity, not scorn, I felt, though desolate 
The desolator now, and unaware 
The curses which he mocked had caught him by 
the hair. 

XXVI. 

I led him forth from that which now might seem 
A gorgeous grave : through portals sculptured deep 
With imagery beautiful as dream 
We went, and left the shades which tend on sleep 
Over its unregarded gold to keep 
Their silent watch. — The child trod faintingly, 
And, as she went, the tears which she did weep 
Glanced in the star-light ; wildered seemed she, 
And when I spake, for sobs she could not answer 



At last the tyrant cried, " She hungers, slave ! 
Stab her, or give her bread !" — It was a tone 
Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave . 
Might hear. I trembled, for the truth was known, 
He with this child had thus been left alone, 
And neither had gone forth for food, — but he 
In mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne, 
And she, a nursling of captivity, 
Knew nought beyond those walls, nor what such 
change might be. 



And he was troubled at a charm withdrawn 
Thus suddenly ; that sceptres ruled no more — 
That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone 
Which once made all things subject to its power — 
Such wonder seized him, as if hour by hour 
The past had come again ; and the swift fall 
Of one so great and terrible of yore 
To desolateness, in the hearts of all 
Like wonder stirred, who saw such awful change 
befal. 

XXIX. 

A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours 
Once in a thousand years, now gathered round 
The fallen tyrant ; — like the rush of showers 
Of hail in spring, pattering along the ground, 
Their many footsteps fell, else came no sound 
From the wide multitude : that lonely man 
Then knew the burthen of his change, and found, 
Concealing in the dust his visage wan, 
Refuge from the keen looks which thro' his bosom 



And he was faint withal. I sate beside him 
Upon the earth, and took that child so fair 
From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him 
Or her ; — when food was brought to them, her share 
To his averted lips the child did bear ; 
But when she saw he had enough, she ate 
And wept the while ; — the lonely man's despair 
Hunger then overcame, and of his state 
Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate. 



Slowly the silence of the multitudes 
Past, as when far is heard in some lone dell 
The gathering of a wind among the woods — 
And he is fallen ! they cry ; he who did dwell 
Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell, 
Among our homes, is fallen ! the murderer 
Who slaked his thirsting soul as from a well 
Of blood and tears with ruin ! He is here ! 
Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him 

rpnr ! 



Thenwasheard— He who judged let him be brought 
To judgment ! Blood for blood cries from the soil 
On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought! 
Shall Othman only unavenged despoil ? 
Shall they, who by the stress of grinding toil 
Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries, 
Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil, 
Or creep within his veins at will ? — Arise ! 
And to high justice make her chosen sacrifice. 



" What do ye seek \ what fear ye ?" then I cried, 
Suddenly starting forth, " that ye should shed 
The blood of Othman — if your hearts are tried 
In the true love of freedom, cease to dread 
This one poor lonely man — beneath Heaven shed 
In purest light above us all, through earth, 
Maternal earth, who doth her sweet smiles spread 
For all, let him go free ; until the worth 
Of human nature win from these a second birth. 



xxxrv. 
" What call ye justice ? Is there one who ne'er 
In secret thought has wished another's ill ? — 
Are ye all pure \ Let those stand forth who hear, 
And tremble not. Shall they insult and kill, 
If such they be ? their mild eyes can they fill 
With the false anger of the hypocrite ? 
Alas, such were not pure — the chastened will 
Of virtue sees that justice is the light 
Of love, and not revenge, and terror and despite." 



The murmur of the people, slowly dying, 
Paused as I spake ; then those who near me were, 
Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying 
Shrouding his head, which now that infant fair 
Clasped on her lap in silence ; — through the air 
Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet 
In pity's madness, and, to the despair 
Of him whom late they cursed, a solace sweet 
His very victims brought — soft looks and speeches 
meet. 

XXXVI. 

Then to a home, for his repose assigned, 
Accompanied by the still throng he went 
In silence, where, to soothe his rankling mind, 
Some likeness of his ancient state was lent ; 
And, if his heart could have been innocent 
As those who pardoned him, he might have ended 
His days in peace ; but his straight lips were bent, 
Men said, into a smile which guile portended, 
A sight with which that child like hope with fear 
was blended. 



70 



THE REVOLT OF Islam. 



"Twas midnight now, the eve of that great day, 
Whereon the many nations at whoso call 
The chains of earth like mist molted away, 
Decreed to hold a sacred Festival, 
A rite to attest the equality of all 
Who live. So to their homes, to dream or wake 
All went. The sleepless silence did rocal 
Laone to my thoughts, with hopes that make 
The Hood recede from which their thirst they seek 
to slake. 

xxxvi : i. 
The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple 

fountains 
I drank those hopes which make the spirit quail, 
As to the plain between the misty mountains 
And the great City, with a countenance pale 
I went : — it was a sight which might avail 
To make men weep exulting tears, for whom 
Now first from human power the reverend veil 
Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb 
Pour forth her swarming sons to a fraternal 
doom: 

XXXIX. 

To see, far glancing in the misty morning, 
The signs of that innumerable host, 
To hear one sound of many made, the warning 
Of Earth to Heaven from its free children tost, 
While the eternal hills, and the sea lost 
In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky 
The city's myriad spires of gold, almost 
With human joy made mute society 
Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be. 



To see, like some vast island from the Ocean, 
The Altar of the Federation rear 
Its pile i'the midst ; a work, which the devotion 
Of millions in one night created there, 
Sudden, as when the moonrise makes appear 
Strange clouds in the east ; a marble pyramid 
Distinct with steps : that mighty shape did wear 
The light of genius ; its still shadow hid 
Far ships : to know its height the morning mists 
forbid ! 

XLI. 

To hear the restless multitudes for ever 
Around the base of that great Altar flow, 
As on some mountain islet burst and shiver 
Atlantic waves ; and solemnly and slow 
As the wind bore that tumult to and fro, 
To feel the dreamlike music, which did swim 
Like beams through floating clouds on waves below, 
Falling in pauses from that Altar dim 
As silver-sounding tongues breathed an aerial 
hymn. 

XLII. 

To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn 
Lethean joy ! so that all those assembled 
Cast off their memories of the past outworn : 
Two only bosoms with their own life trembled, 
And mine was one, — and we had both dissembled; 
So with a beating heart I went, and one, 
Who having much, covets yet more, resembled ; 
A lost and dear possession, which not won, 
He walks in lonely gloom beneath the noonday 



To the great Pyramid I came : its stair 
With female quires was thronged : the loveliest 
Among the free, grouped with its sculptures rare. 
As I approached, the morning's golden mist, 
Which now the wonder-stricken breezes kist 
With their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone 
Like Athos seen from Samothracia, drest 
In earliest light by vintagers, and one 
Sate there, a female shape upon an ivory throne. 



A Form most like the imagined habitant 
Of silver exhalations sprung from dawn, 
By winds which feed on sunrise woven, to enchant 
The faiths of men : all mortal eyes were drawn, 
As famished mariners through strange seas gone, 
Gaze on a burning watch-tower, by the light 
Of those divinest lineaments — alone 
With thoughts which none could share, from that 
fair sight 
I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her coun- 
tenance bright. 

XL.V. 

And, neither did I hear the acclamations 
Which, from brief silence bursting, filled the air, 
With her strange name and mine, from all the 

nations 
Which we, they said, in strength had gathered there 
From the sleep of bondage ; nor the vision fair 
Of that bright pageantry beheld,— but blind 
And silent, as a breathing corpse did fare, 
Leaning upon my friend, till, like a wind [mind. 
To fevered cheeks, a voice flowed o'er my troubled 



Like music of some minstrel heavenly-gifted, 
To one whom fiends enthral, this voice to me ; 
Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted, 
I was so calm and joyous. — I could see 
The platform where we stood, the statues three 
Which kept their marble watch on that high shrine, 
The multitudes, the mountains, and the sea ; 
As when eclipse hath passed, things sudden shine 
To men's astonished eyes most clear and crystalline. 



At first Laone spoke most tremulously : 
But soon her voice that calmness which it shed 
Gathered, and—" Thou art whom I sought to see. 
And thou art our first votary here," she said : 
"I had a dear friend once, but he is dead ! — 
And of all those on the wide earth who breathe, 
Thou dost resemble him alone — I spread 
This veil between us two, that thou beneath 
Should'st image one who may have been long lost 
in death. 

XL VIII. 

" For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me ? 
Yes, but those joys which silence well requite 
Forbid reply : why men have chosen me 
To be the Priestess of this holiest rite 
I scarcely know, but that the floods of light 
Which flow over the world, have borne me hither 
To meet thee, long most dear ; and now unite 
Thine hand with mine, and may all comfort wither 
From both the hearts whose pulse in joy now beats 
together, 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



71 



" If our own will as others' law we bind, 
If the foul worship trampled here we fear ; 
If as ourselves we cease to love our kind ! " — 
She paused, and pointed up wards— sculptured there 
Three shapes around her ivory throne appear; 
One was a Giant, like a child asleep 
On a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were 
In dream, sceptres and crowns ; and one did keep 
Its watchful eyes in doubt whether to smile or weep; 



A Woman sitting on the sculptured disk 

Of the broad earth, and feeding from one breast 

A human babe and a young basilisk ; 

Her looks were sweet as Heaven's when loveliest 

In Autumn eves. — The third Image was drest 

In white wings swift as clouds in winter skies. 

Beneath his feet, 'mongst ghastliest forms, represt 

Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise, 

While calmly on the Sun he turned his diamond 
eyes. 

iii. 
Beside that Image then I sate, while she 
Stood, 'mid the throngs which ever ebbed and 
Like light amid the shadows of the sea [flowed 
Cast from one cloudless star, and on the crowd 
That touch, which none who feels forgets, bestowed ; 
And whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze 
Of the great Image as o'er Heaven it glode, 
That rite had place ; it ceased when sunset's blaze 

Burned o'er the isles ; all stood in joy and deep 
amaze ; 

When in the silence of all spirits there 
Laone's voice was felt, and through the air 
Her thrilling gestures spoke, most eloquently fair. 

" Calm art thou as yon sunset ! swift and strong 
As new-fledged Eagles, beautiful and young, 
That float among the blinding beams of morning; 
And underneath thy feet writhe Faith, and Folly, 
Custom, and Hell, and mortal Melancholy — 
Hark ! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning 
Of thy voice sublime and holy ; 
Its free spirits here assembled, 
See thee, feel thee, know thee now : 
To thy voice their hearts have trembled, 
Like ten thousand clouds which flow 
With one wide wind as it flies ! 
Wisdom ! thy irresistible children rise 
To hail thee, and the elements they chain 
And their own will to swell the glory of thy train. 

2. 
" Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven i 
Mother and soul of all to which is given 
The light of life, the loveliness of being, 
Lo ! thou dost re-ascend the human heart, 
Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert, 
In dreams of Poets old grown pale by seeing 
The shade of thee : — now, millions start 
To feel thy lightnings through them burning : 
Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure, 
Or Sympathy, the sad tears turning 
To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure, 
Descends amidst us ; — Scorn and Hate, 
Revenge and Selfishness, are desolate — 
A hundred nations swear that there shall be 
Pity and Peace and Love, amongthe good and free! 



iDfc Eldest of things, divine Equality ! 
Wisdom and Love are but the slaves of thee, 
The Angels of thy sway, who pour around thee 
Treasures from all the cells of human thought, 
And from the Stars, and from the Ocean brought, 
And the last living heart whose beatings bound thee: 
The powerful and the wise had sought 
Thy coming ; thou in light descending 
O'er the wide land which is thine own, 
Like the spring whose breath is blending 
All blasts of fragrance into one, 
Comest upon the paths of men ! 
Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, 
And all her children here in glory meet 
To feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy sacred feet. 



" My brethren, we are free ! the plains and moun- 
tains, 
The grey sea-shore, the forests, and the fountains, 
Are haunts of happiest dwellers ; man and woman, 
Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow 
From lawless love a solace for their sorrow ! 
For oft we still must weep, since we are human. 
A stormy night's serenest morrow, 
Whose showers are pity's gentle tears, 
Whose clouds are smiles of those that die 
Like infants, without hopes or fears, 
And whose beams are joys that he 
In blended hearts, now holds dominion ; 
The dawn of mind, which, upwards on a pinion 
Borne, swift as sun-rise, far illumines space, 
And clasps this barren world in its own bright 
embrace ! 

5. 
" My brethren, we are free ! the fruits are glowing 
Beneath the stars, and the night- winds are flowing 
O'er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dream- 
Never again may blood of bird or beast [ ing — 
Stain with its venomous stream a human feast, 
To the pure skies in accusation steaming ; 
Avenging poisons shall have ceased 
To feed disease and fear and madness, 
The dwellers of the earth and air 
Shall throng around our steps in gladness, 
Seeking their food or refuge there. 
Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull, 
To make this earth, our home, more beautiful, 
And Science, and her sister Poesy, 
Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free ! 



" Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations ! 
Bear witness, Night, and ye, mute Constellations, 
Who gaze on us from your crystalline cars ! 
Thoughts have gone forth whose powers can sleep no 
Victory ! Victory ! Earth's remotest shore, [more ! 
Regions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars, 
The green lands cradled in the roar 

Of western waves, and wildernesses 
Peopled and vast, which skirt the oceans 
Where morning dyes her golden tresses, 
Shall soon partake our high emotions : 
Kings shall turn pale ! Almighty Fear, 
The Fiend-God, when our charmed name he hear, 
Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes, 
While Truth with Joy enthroned o'er his lost 
empire reigns ! " 



THE REVOLT OF [SLAM 



1. the mists of night entwining 

Their dim woof, floated o'er the infinite throng , 
She like a spirit through the darkness shining. 
In tones whose sweetness sQenee did prolong, 

As if to lingering winds they did belong, 
I forth her inmost soul: a passional 
With wild and thrilling pauses woven among. 
Which wh. - nute. for it could 

To rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach. 



Her voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps 
The withered leaves of Autumn to the lake, 
And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps 
In the shadow of the shores ; as dead leaves 

wake 
Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which make 
Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue, 
The multitude so moveless did partake 
Such living change, and kindling murmurs flew 
As o'er that speechless calm delight and wonder 
grew. 

LTV 

Over the plain the throngs were scattered then 
In groups around the fires, which from the sea 
Even to the gorge of the first mountain glen 
Blazed wide and far : the banquet of the free 
Was spread beneath many a dark cypress tree, 
Beneath whose spires, which swayed in the red 

light 
Reclining as they ate, of Liberty, 
And Hope, and Justice, and Laone's name, 
Earth's children did a woof of happy converse 

frame. 

LV. 

Theirfeast wassuch as Earth, the general mother, 
Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles 
In the embrace of Autumn ; — to each other 
As when some parent fondly reconciles 
Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles 
With her own sustenance ; they relenting weep : 
Such was this Festival, which from their isles, 
And continents, and winds, and oceans deep, 
All shapes might throng to share, that fly, or walk, 
or creep. 

LVI. 

Might share in peace and innocence, for gore 
Or poison none this festal did pollute, 
But piled on high, an overflowing store 
Of pomegranates, and citrons, fairest fruit, 
Melons and dates, and figs, and many a root 
Sweet and sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet 
Accursed fire their mild juice could transmute 
Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set 
In baskets ; with pure streams their thirsting lips 
they wet. 

LVir. 

Laone had descended from the shrine, 
And every deepest look and holiest mmd 
Fed on her form, though now those tones divine 
Were silent as she past ; she did unwind 
Her veil, as with the crowds of her own kind 
She mixed ; some impulse made my heart re- 
frain 
From seeking her that night, so I reclined 
Amidst a group, where on the utmost plain 
A festal watch-fire burned beside the dusky main. 



And joyous was our feast ; pathetic talk, 
And wit, and harmony of choral strains, 
While far Orion o'er the waves did walk 
That flow among the isles, held us in chains 
( H sweet captivity, which none disdains 
Who feels : but, when his zone grew dim in mist 
Which clothes the Ocean's bosom, o'er the plains 
The multitudes went homeward, to their rest, 
Which that delightful day with its own shadow blest- 



CAOTO VI. 

i. 
Beside the dimness of the glimmering sea, 
Weaving swift language from impassioned themes, 
With that dear friend I lingered, who to me 
So late had been restored, beneath the gleams 
Of the silver stars ; and ever in soft dreams 
Of future love and peace sweet converse lapt 
Our willing fancies, till the pallid beams 
Of the last watch-fire fell, and darkness wrapt 
The waves, and each bright chain of floating fire 
was snapt. 

n . 
And till we came even to the City's wall 
And the great gate, then, none knew whence or 
uiet on the multitudes did fall : [ w hy, 

And first, one pale and breathless past ue 
And stared and spoke not ; then with piercing cry 
A troop of wild-eyed women, by the shrieks 
Of theh* own terror driven, — tumultuously 
Hither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks, 
Each one from fear unknown a sudden refuge 
seeks — 

UL 

Then, rallying cries of treason and of danger 
Resounded : and — " They come ! to arms ! to 
The Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger [arms! 
Comes to enslave us in his name ! to arms ! " 
In vain : for Panic, the pale fiend who charms 
Strength to forswear her right, those millions swept 
Like waves before the tempest — these alarms 
Came to me, as to know their cause I leapt 
On the gate's turret, and in rage and grief and scorn 
I wept ! 

IV. 

For to the North I saw the town on fire, 
And its red light made morning pallid now, 
Which burst over wide Asia. — Louder, higher, 
The yells of victory and the screams of woe 
I heard approach, and saw the throng below [falls 
Stream through the gates like foam -wrought water- 
Fed from a thousand storms — the fearful glow 
Of bombs flares overhead — at intervals 
The red artillery's bolt mangling among them falls. 



And now the horsemen come — and all was done 
Swifter than I have spoken — I beheld 
Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun. 
I rushed among the rout to have repelled 
That miserable flight — one moment quelled 
By voice, and looks, and eloquent despair, 
As if reproach from their own hearts withheld 
Their steps, they stood ; but soon came pouring 
there [bear. 

New multitudes, and did those rallied bands o'er- 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



7.5 



I strove, as drifted on some cataract 
# By irresistible streams, some wretch might strive 
Who hears its fatal roar: the files compact 
Whelmed me, and from the gate availed to drive 
With quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive 
Their ranks with bloodier chasm : into the plain 
Disgorged at length the dead and the alive, 
In one dread mass, were parted, and the stain 
Of blood from mortal steel fell o'er the fields like 



For now the despot's blood-hounds with their prey 
Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep 
Their gluttony of death ; the loose array 
Of horsemen o'er the wide fields murdering sweep, 
And with loud laughter for their tyrant reap 
A harvest sown with other hopes ; the while, 
Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep 
A killing rain of fire : — when the waves smile 
As sudden earthquakes light many a volcano isle. 



Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread 
For the carrion fowls of Heaven.— I saw the sight— 
I moved — I lived — as o'er the heaps of dead, 
Whose stony eyes glared in the morning light, 
I trod ; to me there came no thought of flight, 
But with loud cries of scorn which whoso heard 
That dreaded death, felt in his veins the might 
Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred, 
And desperation's hope in many hearts recurred. 



A band of brothers gathering round me, made, 
Although unarmed, a steadfast front, and still 
Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade 
Of gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill 
With doubt even in success ; deliberate will 
Inspired our growing troop ; not overthrown 
It gained the shelter of a grassy hill, 
And ever still our comrades were hewn down, 
And their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps 
strown. 



Immoveably we stood — in joy I found, 
Beside me then, firm as a giant pine 
Among the mountain vapours driven around, 
The old man whom I loved — his eyes divine 
With a mild look of courage answered mine, 
And my young friend was near, and ardently 
His hand grasped mine a moment — now the line 
Of war extended, to our rallying cry, 
As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die. 



For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven 
The horsemen hewed our unarmed myriads down 
Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven 
Too near, those slaves were swiftly overthrown 
By hundreds leaping on them : flesh and bone 
Soon made our ghastly ramparts ; then the shaft 
Of the artillery from the sea was thrown 
More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed 
In pride to hear the wind our screams of tormenl 
wait. 



For on one side alone the hill gave shelter, 
So vast that phalanx of unconquered men, 
And there the living in their blood did welter 
Of the dead and dying, which, in that green glen, 
Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen 
Under the feet — thus was the butchery waged 
While the sun clomb Heaven's eastern steep — but 
It 'gan to sink, a fiercer combat raged, [when 
For in mox*e doubtful strife the armies were engaged. 



Within a cave upon the hill were found 
A bundle of rude pikes, the instrument 
Of those who war but on their native ground 
For natural rights : a shout of joyance sent 
Even from our hearts the wide air pierced and 
As those few arms the bravest and the best [rent, 
Seized; and each sixth, thus armed, did now present 
A line which covered and sustained the rest, 
A confident phalanx, which the foes on every side 
invest. 



That onset turned the foes to flight almost ; 
But soon they saw their present strength, and knew 
That coming night would to our resolute host 
Bring victory ; so dismounting close they drew 
Their glittering files, and then the combat grew 
Unequal but most horrible ; — and ever 
Our myriads, whom the swift bolt overthrew, 
j Or the red sword, failed like a mountain river 
! Which rushes forth in foam to sink in sands for 



Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind 
Our human brethren mix, like beasts of blood 
To mutual ruin armed by one behind, [good 

Who sits and scoffs ! — That friend so mild and 
Who like its shadow near my youth had stood, 
Was stabbed ! — my old preserver's hoary hair, 
With the flesh clinging to its roots, was strewed 
Under my feet ! I lost all sense or care, 
And like the rest I grew desperate and unaware. 



The battle became ghastlier, in the midst 
I paused, and saw, how ugly and how fell, 
Hate ! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd'st 
For love. The ground in many a little dell 
Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell 
Alternate victory and defeat, and there 
The combatants with rage most horrible 
Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare, 
And impotent their tongues they lolled into the air, 



Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog's hanging ; 
Want, and Moon-madness, and the Pest's swift bane 
When its shafts smite — while yet its bow is 

twanging — 
Have each their mark and sign— some ghastly stain ; 
And this was thine, O War ! of hate and pain 
Thou loathed slave. I saw all shapes of death, 
A.nd minister'd to many, o'er the plain 
While carnage in the sunbeam's warmth didseethe, 
rill twilight o'er the east wove her serenest wreath. 



74 



Till: REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



The few who vet survived, resolute and firm, 
Around me fought. At the decline of day, 
Winding above the mountain's snowy term, 
New banners shone : they quivered in the ray 
Of the sun's unseeu orb—ere night the array 
Of fresh troops hemmed us in — of those brave bands 
I soon survived alone — and now I lay 
Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands 
I felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands ; 



When on my foes a sudden terror came, 
And they fled, scattering. — Lo! with reinless speed 
A black Tartarian horse of giant frame 
Comes trampling o'er the dead ; the living bleed 
Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed, 
On which, like to an angel, robed in white, 
Sate one waving a sword ; the hosts recede 
And fly, as through their ranks, with awful might, 
Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift 
and bright ; 

XX. 

And its path made a solitude. — I rose 
And marked its coming ; it relaxed its course 
As it approached me, and the wind that flows [force 
Through night, bore accents to mine ear whose 
Might create smiles in death. — The Tartar horse 
Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed, 
And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source 
Of waters in the desert, as she said, 
■ Mount with me, Laon, now "—I rapidly obeyed. 



Then "Away! away!" she cried, and stretched her 
As 'twere a scourge over the courser's head, [sword 
And lightly shook the reins. — We spake no word, 
But like the vapour of the tempest fled 
Over the plain ; her dark hair was dispread, 
Like the pine's locks upon the lingering blast ; 
Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread 
Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast, 
As o'er their glimmering forms the steed's broad 
shadow past ; 

xxn. 
And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust, 
His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray, 
And turbulence, as if a whirlwind's gust 
Surrounded us ; — and still away ! away .' 
Through the desert night we sped, while she al way 
Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest 
Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray 
Of the obscure stars gleamed ; — its rugged breast 
The steed strained up, and then his impulse did 
arrest. 

XXIII. 

A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean : — 
From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted 
Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion 
Of waters, as in spots for ever haunted 
By the choicest winds of Heaven, which are en- 
To music by the wand of Solitude, [chanted 

That wizard wild, and the far tents implanted 
Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood 
Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean's curved 
flood. 



One moment these were heard and seen — another 
Past ; and the two who stood beneath that night, 
Each only heard, or saw, or felt, the other ; 
As from the lofty steed she did alight, 
Cythna (for, from the eyes whose deepest light 
Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale 
With influence strange of mournfullest delight, 
My own sweet Cythna looked) with joy did quail, 
And felt her strength in tears of human weakness 
fail. 



And for a space in my embrace she rested, 
Her head on my unquiet heart reposing, 
While my faint arms her languid frame invested : 
At length she looked on me, and half unclosing 
Her tremulous lips, said : "Friend, thy bands were 
The battle, as I stood before the King [losing 
In bonds. — I burstthem then, and swiftly choosing 
The time, did seize a Tartar's sword, and spring 
Upon Iris horse, and swift as on the whirlwind's wing, 



" Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer, 
And we are here." — Then, turning to the steed, 
She pressed the white moon on his front with pure 
And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed 
From the green ruin plucked, that he might feed ; — 
But I to a stone seat that Maiden led, 
And kissing her fair eyes, said, " Thou hast need 
Of rest," and I heaped up the courser's bed 
In a green mossy nook, with mountain flowers 
dispread. 

XXVII. 

Within that ruin, where a shattered portal 
Looks to the eastern stars, abandoned now 
By man, to be the home of things immortal, 
Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go, 
And must inherit all he builds below, 
When he is gone, a hall stood ; o'er whose roof 
Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow, 
Clasping its grey rents with a verdurous woof, 
A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof. 



The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made 
A natural couch of leaves in that recess, 
Which seasons none disturbed, but in the shade 
Of flowering parasites, did spring love to dress 
With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness 
Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene'er 
The wandering wind her nurslings might caress ; 
Whose intertwining fingers ever there, 
Made music wild and soft that filled the listening 
air. 

TTXTX. 

We know not where we go, or what sweet dream 
May pilot us through caverns strange and fair 
Of far and pathless passion, while the stream 
Of life our bark doth on its whirlpools bear, 
Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air ; 
Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion 
Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there 
Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean 
Of universal life, attuning its commotion. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



76 



To the pure all things are pure ! Oblivion wrapt 
Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow 
Of public hope was from our being snapt, 
Though linked years had bound it there ; for now 
A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below 
All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere, 
Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow, 
Came on us, as we sate in silence there, 
Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air. 



In silence which doth follow talk that causes 
The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears, 
When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses 
Of inexpressive speech : — the youthful years 
Which we together past, their hopes and fears, 
The blood itself which ran within our frames, 
That likeness of the features winch endears 
The thoughts expressed by them, our very names, 
And all the winged hours which speechless memory 
claims, 

xxxn. 
Had found a voice : — and ere that voice did pass, 
The night grew damp and dim, and through a rent 
Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass, 
A wandering Meteor, by some wild wind sent, 
Hung high hi the green dome, to which it lent 
A faint and pallid lustre ; while the song 
Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent, 
Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among ; 
A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit's tongue. 



The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate, 
And Cythna's glowing arms, and the thick ties 
Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight 
My neck near hers, her dark and deepening eyes, 
Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies 
O'er a dim well, move, though the star reposes, 
Swam in our mute and liquid ecstacies, 
Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses, 
With their own fragrance pale, which spring but 
half uncloses. 



The Meteor to its far morass returned : 
The beating of our veins one interval 
Made still ; and then I felt the blood that burned 
Within her frame, mingle with mine, and fall 
Around my heart like fire ; and over all 
A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep 
And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall 
Two disunited spirits when they leap 
[n union from this earth's obscure and fading sleep. 



Was it one moment that confounded thus 
All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one 
Unutterable power, which shielded us 
Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone 
Into a wide and wild oblivion 
Of tumult and of tenderness ? or now 
Had ages, such as make the moon and sun, 
The seasons and mankind, their changes know, 
Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below ? 



I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps 
The failing heart in languishment, or limb 
Twined within limb ? or the quick dying gasps 
Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim 
Through tears of a wide mist, boundless and dim, 
In one caress? What is the strong control 
Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb, 
Where far over the world those vapours roll, 
Which blend two restless frames in one reposing 
soul? 



It is the shadow which doth float unseen, 
But not unfelt, o'er blind mortality, 
Whose divine darkness fled not from that green 
And lone recess, where lapt in peace did lie 
Our linked frames, till, from the changing sky, 
That night and still another day had fled ; 
And then I saw and felt. The moon was high, 
And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread 
Under its orb, — loud winds were gathering over- 
head. 



Cythna's sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon, 
Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill, 
And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn 
O'er her pale bosom : — all within was still, 
And the sweet peace of joy did almost till 
The depth of her unfathomable look ; — 
And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill, 
The waves contending in its caverns strook, 
For they foreknew the stonn, and the grey ruin 
shook. 

XXXIX. 

There we unheeding sate, in the communion 
Of interchanged vows, which, with a rite 
Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.— 
Few were the living hearts which could unite 
Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night 
With such close sympathies, for they had sprung 
From linked youth, and from the gentle might 
Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long, 
Which common hopes and fears made, like a 
tempest, strong. 

XL. 

And such is Nature's law divine, that those 
Who grow together cannot choose but love, 
If faith or custom do not interpose, 
Or common slavery mar what else might move 
All gentlest thoughts ; as in the sacred grove 
Which shades the springs of ^Ethiopian Nile, 
That living tree, which, if the arrowy dove 
Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile, 
But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sun- 
beams smile ; 

XLI. 

And clings to them, when darkness may dissever 
The close caresses of all duller plants 
Which bloom on the wide earth — thus we for ever 
Were linked, for love had nurst us in the haunts 
Where knowledge from its secret source enchants 
Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing, 
Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants, 
As the great Nile feeds Egypt ; ever flinging 
Light on the woven boughs which o'er its waves 
are swinging. 



76 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



The tones of C\ tlum's voice Like echoes were 
Of those fiurmurmuring streams; theyroseandfell, 

.Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air, — 
And so wo sate, until our talk betel 
Of the late ruin, swift and horrible, 
And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown, 
Whose fruit is evil's mortal poison : well 
For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone, 
But C\ thna's eyes looked faint, and now two days 
were crone 



Since she had food : — therefore I did awaken 
Tke Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane, 
Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken, 
Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein, 
Following me obediently ; with pain 
Of heart, so deep and dread, that one caress, 
When lips and heart refuse to part again, 
Till they have told their fill, could scarce express 
The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness, 



Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode 
That willing steed — the tempest and the night, 
Which gave my path its safety as I rode 
Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite 
The darkness and the tumult of their might 
Borne on all winds. — Far through the streaming 

rain 
Floating at intervals the garments white 
Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again 
Came tomeonthegust,andsoon I reached the plain. 



I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he 
Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red 
Turned on the lightning's cleft exultingly ; 
And when the earth beneath his tameless tread, 
Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread 
His nostrils to the blast, and joyously 
Mock the fierce peal with neighings ; — thus we sped 
O'er the lit plain, and soon I could descry 

Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of 
victory. 

xlvt. 
There was a desolate village in a wood, 
Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed 
The hungry storm ; it was a place of blood, 
A heap of hearthless walls ; — the flames were dead 
Within those dwellings now, — the life had fled 
From all those corpses now, — but the wide sky 
Flooded with lightning was ribbed overhead 
By the black rafters, and around did lie 

Women, and babes, and men, slaughtered con- 
fusedly. 

xLvir. 
Beside the fountain in the market-place 
Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare 
With horny eyes upon each other's face, 
And on the earth and on the vacant air, 
And upon me, close to the waters where 
I stooped to slake my thirst ; — I shrank to taste, 
For the salt bitterness of blood was there ! 
But tied the steed beside, and sought in haste 

If any yet survived amid that ghastly waste. 



No living thing was there beside one woman, 
Whom 1 found wandering in the streets, and she 
Was withered from a likeness of aught human 
Into a fiend, by some strange misery : 
Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me, 
And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed 
With a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee, 
And cried," Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed 
The Plague's blue kisses — soon millions shall 
pledge the draught! 

XUX. 

" My name is Pestilence — this bosom dry 
Once fed two babes — a sister and a brother — 
When I came home, one in the blood did lie 
Of three death-wounds— the flames had ate the 
Since then I have no longer been a mother, [other! 
But I am Pestilence ; — hither and thither 
I flit about, that I may slay and smother ; — 
All lips which I have kissed must surely wither, 
But Death's — if thou art he, we'll go to work 
together ! 

L. 

" What seekest thou here ? the moonlight comes in 
The dew is rising dankly from the dell; [flashes, — 
'Twill moisten her ! and thou shalt see the gashes 
In my sweet boy — now full of worms — but tell 
First what thou seek'st." — " I seek for food." — 

« 'Tis well, 
Thou shalt have food ; Famine, my paramour, 
Waits for us at the feast — cruel and fell 
Is Famine, but he drives not from his door 
Those whom these lips have kissed, alone. No 

more, no more !" 



As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength 
Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth 
She led, and over many a corpse : — at length 
We came to a lone hut, where on the earth 
Which made its floor, she in her ghastly mirth 
Gathering from all those homes now desolate, 
Had piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth 
Among the dead — round which she set in state 
A ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate. 



She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high 
Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried : " Eat! 
Share the great feast — to-morrow we must die !" 
And then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet, 
Towards her bloodless guests; — that sight to meet, 
Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she 
Who loved me, did with absent looks defeat 
Despair, I might have raved in sympathy ; 
But now I took the food that woman offered me ; 



And vainly having with her madness striven 
If I might win her to return with me, 
Departed. In the eastern beams of Heaven 
The lightning now grew pallid — rapidly, 
As by the shore of the tempestuous sea 
The dark steed bore me, and the mountain grey 
Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see 
Cythna among the rocks, where she alway 
Had sate, with anxious eyes fixed on the fingering 
day. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



And joy was ours to meet : she was most pale, 
Famished, and wet and weary, so I cast 
My arms around her, lest her steps should fail 
As to our home we went, and thus embraced, 
Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste 
Than e'er the prosperous know ; the steed behind 
Trod peacefully along the mountain waste : 
We reached our home ere morning could unbind 
Night's latest veil, and on our bridal couch reclined. 



Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom, 
And sweetest kisses past, we two did share 
Our peaceful meal : — as an autumnal blossom, 
Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air, 
After cold showers, like rainbows woven there, 
Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit 
Mantled, and in her eyes, an atmosphere [it, 
Of health, and hope ; and sorrow languished near 
And fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit. 



CANTO VII. 

i. 
So we sate joyous as the morning ray 
Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm 
Now lingering on the winds ; light airs did play 
Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm, 
And we sate linked in the inwoven charm 
Of converse and caresses sweet and deep, 
Speechless caresses, talk that might disarm 
Time, though he wield the darts of death and sleep, 

And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison 
steep. 

n. 
I told her of my sufferings and my madness, 
And how, awakened from that dreamy mood 
By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness 
Came to my spirit in my solitude ; 
And all that now I was, while tears pursued 
Each other down her fair and listening cheek 
Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood 
From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak, 

Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake. 



She told me a strange tale of strange endurance, 
Like broken memories of many a heart 
Woven into one ; to which no firm assurance, 
So wild were they, could her own faith impart. 
She said that not a tear did dare to start [firm 
From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were 
When from all mortal hope she did depart, 
Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term, 
And that she reached the port without one fear 
infirm. 

IV. 

One was she among many there, the thralls 
Of the cold tyrant's cruel lust : and they 
Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls ; 
But she was calm and sad, musing alway 
On loftiest enterprise, till on a day 
The tyrant heard her singing to her lute 
A wild and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay, 
Like winds that die in wastes — one moment mute 
The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast 
pollute. 



Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness, 
One moment to great Nature's sacred power 
He bent and was no longer passionless ; 
But when he bade her to his secret bower 
Be borne a loveless victim, and she tore 
Her locks in agony, and her words of flame 
And mightier looks availed not ; then he bore 
Again his load of slavery, and became 
A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name. 



She told me what a loathsome agony 
Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight, 
Foul as in dreams most fearful imagery 
To dally with the mowing dead— that night 
All torture, fear, or horror, made seem light 
Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the 
Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight [day 
Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay 
Struggling, aghast and pale the tyrant fled away. 



Her madness was a beam of light, a power 
Which dawned through the rent soul ; and words 

it gave, 
Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore 
Which might not be withstood, whence none could 

save 
All who approached their sphere, like some calm 

wave 
Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath ; 
And sympathy made each attendant slave 
Fearless and free, and they began to breathe 
Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath. 



The King felt pale upon his noon-day throne ; 
At night two slaves he to her chamber sent, 
One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown 
From human shape into an instrument 
Of all things ill — distorted, bowed and bent. 
The other was a wretch from infancy 
Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant 
But to obey : from the fire-isles came he, 
A diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral sea. 



They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke 
Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas, 
Until upon their path the morning broke ; 
They anchored then, where, be there calm or 
The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades [breeze, 
Shakes with the sleepless surge ; — the iEthiop there 
Wound his long arms around her, and with knees 
Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her 
Among the closing waves out of the boundless air. 



" Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain 
Of morning light, into some shadowy wood, 
He plunged through the green silence of the main, 
Through many a cavern which the eternal flood 
Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood ; 
And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder, 
And among mightier shadows which pursued 
His heels, he wound : until the dark rocks under 
He touched a golden chain— a sound arose like 
thunder. 



ya 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



a A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling 
Beneath the deep — a burst of waters driven 
As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling: 
And in that roof of crags a space was riven 
Thro' which there shoue the emerald beams of 

heaven. 
Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven, 
Like sunlight through acacia woods at even, 
Through which, his way the diver having cloven, 
Past like a spark sent up out of a burning oven. 



" And then," she said, " he laid me in a cave 
Above the waters, by that chasm of sea, 
A fountain round and vast, in which the wave 
Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually, 
Down which, one moment resting, he did flee, 
Winning the adverse depth ; that spacious cell 
Like an upaithric temple wide and high, 
Whose aery dome is inaccessible, 
Was pierced with one round cleft through which 
the sun-beams fell. 



rt Below, the fountain's brink was richly paven 
With the deep's wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand 
Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven 
With mystic legends by no mortal hand, [mand, 
Left there, when, thronging to the moon's com- 
The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate 
Of mountains, and on such bright floor did stand 
Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state 
Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart 
create. 



" The fiend of madness which had made its prey 
Of my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile : 
There was an interval of many a day, 
And a sea-eagle brought me food the while, 
Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle, 
And who, to be the jailer, had been taught, 
Of that strange dungeon : as a friend whose smile 
Like light and rest at morn and even is sought, 
That wild bird was to me, till madness misery 
brought. 



u The misery of a madness slow and creeping, 
Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air, 
And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleep- 
In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair, [ing 
Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there ; 
And the sea-eagle looked a fiend who bore 
Thy mangled limbs for food ! — Thus all things were 
Transformed into the agony which I wore, 
Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom's core. 



" Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing, 
The eagle and the fountain and the air ; 
Another frenzy came — there seemed a being 
Within me — a strange load my heart did bear, 
As if some living thing had made its lair 
Even in the fountains of my life : — a long 
And wondrous vision wrought from my despair, 
Then grew, like sweet reality among 
Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng. 



" Methought I was about to be a mother — 
Month after month went by, and still I dreamed 
That we should soon be all to one another, 
I and my child ; and still new pulses seemed 
To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed 
There was a babe within — and when the rain 
Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed, 
Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain, 
I saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had 
lain. 



u It was a babe, beautiful from its birth, — 
It was like thee, dear love ! its eyes were thine, 
Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth 
It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine 
Thine own, beloved ! — 'twas a dream divine ; 
Even to remember how it fled, how swift, 
How utterly, might make the heart repine, — 
Though 'twas a dream." — Then Cythna did uplift 
Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to 
shift : 



A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness 
Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears ; 
Which, having past, as one whom sobs oppress, 
She spoke : " Yes, in the wilderness of years 
Her memory, aye, like a green home appears. 
She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love, 
For many months I had no mortal fears ; 
Methought I felt her lips and breath approve, — 
It was a human thing which to my bosom clove. 



" I watched the dawn of her first smiles, and soon 
When zenith-stars were trembling on the wave, 
Or when the beams of the invisible moon, 
Or sun, from many a prism within the cave 
Their gem-born shadows to the water gave, 
Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread 
hand, [pave, 

From the swift lights which might that fountain 
She would mark one, and laugh,when that command 
Slighting, it lingered there, and could not under- 
stand. 

XXI. 

" Methought her looks began to talk with me ; 
And no articulate sounds, but something sweet 
Her lips would frame, — so sweet it could not be, 
That it was meaningless ; her touch would meet 
Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat 
In response while we slept ; and on a day 
When I was happiest in that strange retreat, 
With heaps of golden shells we two did play, — 

Both infants, weaving wings for time's perpetual 
way. 

xxn. 
" Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were 
Weary with j oy, and tired with our delight, [grown 
We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down 
On one fair mother's bosom : — from that night 
She fled ; — like those illusions clear and bright, 
Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high 
Pause ere it wakens tempest ; — and her flight, 
Though 'twas the death of brainless phantasy, 

Yet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



7:) 



« It seemed that in the dreary night, the diver 
Who brought me thither, came again, and bore 
My child away. I saw the waters quiver, 
When he so swiftly sunk, as once before : 
Then morning came — it shone even as of yore, 
But I was changed — the very life was gone 
Out of my heart — I wasted more and more, 
Day after day, and sitting there alone, 
Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual 



" I was no longer mad, and yet methought 
My breasts were swoln and changed : — in every 
vein [thought 

The blood stood still one moment, while that 
Was passing — with a gush of sickening pain 
It ebbed even to its withered springs again : 
When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned 
From that most strange delusion, which would fain 
Have waked the di'eam for which my spirit yearned 
With more than human love, — then left it unre- 
turned. 

XXV. 

" So now my reason was restored to me, 
I struggled with that dream, which, like a beast 
Most fierce and beauteous, in my memory 
Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast ; 
But all that cave and all its shapes possest [one 
By thoughts which could not fade, renewed each 
Some smile, some look, some gesture which had 
Me heretofore : I, sitting there alone, [blest 

Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual 
moan. 

XXVI. 

" Time past, I know not whether months or years; 
For day, nor night, nor change of seasons made 
Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears : 
And 1 became at last even as a shade, 
A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed, 
Till it be thin as air ; until, one even, 
A Nautilus upon the fountain played, 
Spreading his azure sail where breath of Heaven 
Descended not, among the waves and whirlpools 
driven. 

XXVII. 

" And when the Eagle came, that lovely thing, 
Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat, 
Fled near me as for shelter ; on slow wing, 
The Eagle, hovering o'er his prey, did float ; 
But when he saw that I with fear did note 
His purpose, proffering my own food to him, 
The eager plumes subsided on his throat — 
He came where that bright child of sea did swim, 
And o'er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim. 



" This wakened me, it gave me human strength ; 
And hope, I know not whence or wherefore, rose, 
But I resumed my ancient powers at length ; 
My spirit felt again like one of those, 
Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes 
Of humankind their prey — what was this cave % 
Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows 
Immutable, resistless, strong to save, 
Like mind while yet it mocks the all-devouring 
grave. 



" And where was Laon ? might my heart be dead, 
While that far dearer heart could move and be ? 
Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread, 
Which I had sworn to rend ? I might be free, 
Could I but win that friendly bird to me, 
To bring me ropes ; and long in vain I sought 
By intercourse of mutual imagery 
Of objects, if such aid he could be taught ; 
But fruit, and flowers, and boughs, yet never ropes 
he brought. 

XXX. 

u We live in our own world, and mine was made 
From glorious phantasies of hope departed : 
Aye, we are darkened with their floating shade, 
Or cast a lustre on them — time imparted 
Such power to me, I became fearless-hearted ; 
My eye and voice grew firm, calm was my 

mind, 
And piercing, like the morn, now it has darted 
Its lustre on all hidden things, behind 
Yon dim and fading clouds which load the weary 

wind. 



" My mind became the book through which I grew 
Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave, 
Which like a mine I rifled through and through, 
To me the keeping of its secrets gave — 
One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave 
Whose calm reflects all moving things that are, 
Necessity, and love, and life, the grave, 
And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear ; 
Justice, and truth, and time, and the world's natural 
sphere. 

XXXII. 

" And on the sand would I make signs to range 
These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought; 
Clear elemental shapes, whose smallest change 
A subtler language within language wrought : 
The key of truths which once were dimly taught 
In old Crotona ; — and sweet melodies 
Of love, in that lone solitude I caught [eyes 

From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear 
Shone through my sleep, and did that utterance 
harmonize. 

XXXIII. 

" Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will, 
As in a winged chariot, o'er the plain 
Of crystal youth ; and thou wert there to fill 
My heart with joy, and there we sate again 
On the grey margin of the glimmering main. 
Happy as then but wiser far, for we 
Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain 
Fear, Faith, and Slavery ; and mankind was free, 
Equal, and pure, and wise, in wisdom's prophecy. 

XXXIV. 

" For to my will my fancies were as slaves 
To do their sweet and subtle ministries ; 
And oft from that bright fountain's shadowy waves 
They would make human throngs gather and rise 
To combat with my overflowing eyes, 
And voice made deep with passion — thus I grew 
Familiar with the shock and the surprise 
And war of earthly minds, from which I drew 
The power which has been mine to frame their 
thoughts anew. 



80 



THE REVOLT OK ISLAM 



" And thus my prison was the populous earth — 
Where I saw — even as misery dreams of morn 
Before the east lias given its glory birth — 
Religion's pomp made desolate by the scorn 
Of Wisdom's faintest smile, and thrones upturn, 
And dwellings of mild people interspersed 
With undivided fields of ripening corn, 
And love made free, — a hope which we have nurst 
Even with our blood and tears, — until its glory 
burst. 



" All is not lost ! There is some recompense 
For hope whose fountain can be thus profound, 
Even throned Evil's splendid impotence, 
Girt by its hell of power, the secret sound 
Of hymns to truth and freedom, — the dread 

bound 
Of life and death passed fearlessly and well, 
Dungeons wherein the high resolve is found, 
Racks which degraded woman's greatness tell, 
And what may else be good and irresistible 

XXXVII. 

" Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that 

flare 
In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet 
In this dark ruin— such were mine even there ; 
As in its sleep some odorous violet, 
While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet, 
Breathes in prophetic dreams of day's uprise, 
Or, as ere Scythian frost in fear has met 
Spring's messengers descending from the skies, 
The buds foreknow their life — this hope must ever 

rise. 

XXXVIII. 

" So years had past, when sudden earthquake rent 
The depth of ocean, and the cavern crackt 
With sound, as if the world's wide continent- 
Had fallen in universal ruin wrackt ; 
And through the cleft streamed in one cataract 
The stifling waters : — when I woke, the flood, 
Whose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked, 
Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode 
Before me yawned — a chasm desert, and bare, and 
broad. 

XXXIX. 

" Above me was the sky, beneath the sea: 
I stood upon a point of shattered stone, 
And heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously 
With splash and shock into the deep — anon 
All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone. 
I felt that I was free ! The Ocean-spray 
Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone 
Around, and in my ham the winds did play, 
Lingering as they pursued them unimpeded way. 



" My spirit moved upon the sea like wind 
Which round some thymy cape will lag and hover, 
Though it can wake the still cloud, and unbind 
The strength of tempest : day was almost over, 
When through the fading light I could discover 
A ship approaching — its white sails were fed 
With the north wind — its moving shade did cover 
The twilight deep ; — the mariners in dread 
Cast anchor when they saw new rocks around them 
spread. 



" And when they saw one sitting on a crag, 
They sent a boat to me ; — the sailors rowed 
In awe through many a new and fearful jag 
Of overhanging rock, through which there flowed 
The foam of streams that cannot make abode. 
They came and questioned me, but,when they heard 
My voice, they became silent, and they stood 
And moved as men in whom new love had stirred 
Deep thoughts: so to the ship we past without a word. 



CANTO VIII. 
i. 
" I sate beside the steersman then, and, gazing 
Upon the west, cried, ' Spread the sails ! behold ! 
The sinking moon is like a watch tower blazing 
Over the mountains yet ; — the City of Gold 
Yon Cape alone does from the sight withhold ; 
The stream is fleet — the north breathes steadily 
Beneath the stars ; they tremble with the cold ! 
Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea ; — 
Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny! ' 



" The Mariners obeyed — the Captain stood 

Aloof, and, whispering to the Pilot, said, 

' Alas, alas ! I fear we are pursued 

By wicked ghosts : a Phantom of the Dead, 

The night before we sailed, came to my bed 

In dream, like that ! ' The Pilot then replied, 

' It cannot be — she is a human Maid — 

Her low voice makes you weep — she is some bride, 

Or daughter of high birth— she can be nought 
beside.' 

in. 
" We past the islets, borne by wind and stream, 
And as we sailed, the Mariners came near 
And thronged around to listen ; — in the gleam 
Of the pale moon I stood, as one whom fear 
May not attaint, and my calm voice did rear : 
* Ye are all human — yon broad moon gives light 
To millions who the self-same likeness wear. 
Even while I speak — beneath this very night, 

Them thoughts flow on like ours, in sadness or 
delight. 

IV. 

" * What dream ye ? Your o >vn hands have built a 
Even for yourselves on a beloved shore : [home, 
For some, fond eyes are pining till they come, 
How they will greet him when his toils are o'er, 
And laughing babes rush from the well-known door ! 
Is this your care % ye toil for your own good — 
Ye feel and think — has some immortal power 
Such purposes ? or in a human mood, 

Dream ye some Power thus builds for man in soli- 
tude? 

v. 
" ' What is that Power ? Ye mock yourselves, and 
A human heart to what ye cannot know : [give 
As if the cause of life could think and live ! 
'Twere as if man's own works should feel, and show 
The hopes, and fears, and thoughts, from which th ey 
And he be like to them. Lo ! Plague is free [flow, 
To waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and 
Disease, and Want, and worse Necessity [Snow, 

Of hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



8] 



"< What is that Power ? Some moon-struek sophist 

stood 
Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown 
Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood 
The Form he saw and worshipped was his own, 
His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown ; 
And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith 
Nursed by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon, 
And that men say, that Power has chosen Death 
On all who scorn its laws, to wreak immortal wrath. 



" * Men say that they themselves have heard and 

seen, 
Or known from others who have known such things, 
A Shade,a Form, which Earth and Heaven between 
Wields an invisible rod — that Priests and Kings, 
Custom, domestic sway, aye, all that brings 
Man's free-born soul beneath the oppressor's heel, 
Are his strong ministers, and that the stings 
Of death will make the wise his vengeance feel, 
Though truth and virtue ana their hearts with 

tenfold steel. 

VIII. 

" ' And it is said, this Power will punish wrong ; 
Yes, add despair to crime, and pain to pain ! 
And deepest hell, and deathless snakes among, 
Will bind the wretch on whom is fixed a stain, 
Which, like a plague, a burthen, and a bane, 
Clung to him while he lived ; — for love ana hate, 
Virtue and vice, they say are difference vain — 
The will of strength is right — this human state 
Tyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate. 



" ( Alas, what strength ? Opinion is more frail 
Than yon dim cloud now fading on the moon 
Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail 
To hide the orb of truth — and every throne 
Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow rests thereon, 
One shape of many names : — for this ye plough 
The barren waves of ocean ; hence each one 
Is slave or tyrant ; all betray and bow, 
Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak, or suffer woe. 



" * Its names are each a sign which maketh holy 
All power — aye, the ghost, the dream, the shade, 
Of power — lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and 

folly; • 

The pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made, 
A law to which mankind has been betrayed ; 
And human love, is as the name well known 
Of a dear mother, whom the murderer laid 
In bloody grave, and, into darkness thrown, 
Gatheredher wildered babes around him as his own. 



" ' love ! who to the hearts of wandering men 
Art as the calm to Ocean's weary waves ! 
Justice, or truth, or joy ! thou only can 
From slavery and religion's labyrinth caves 
Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves. 
To give to all an equal share of good, 
To track the steps of freedom, though through 
She pass, to suffer all in patient mood, [graves 
To weep for crime, though stained with thy friend's 
dearest blood. 



" ' To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot, 
To own all sympathies, and outrage none, 
And, in the inmost bowers of sense and thought, 
Until life's sunny day is quite gone down, 
To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone, 
To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe ; 
To live, as if to love and live were one, — 
This is not faith or law, nor those who bow 
To thrones on Heaven or Earth, such destiny may 
know. 



" ' But children near their parents tremble now, 
Because they must obey — one rules another, 
And as one Power rules both high and low, 
So man is made the captive of his brother, 
And Hate is throned on high with Fear her mother, 
Above the Highest — and those fountain-cells, 
Whence love yet flowed when faith had choked 

all other, 
Are darkened — Woman, as the bond-slave, dwells 
Of man, a slave ; and life is poisoned in its wells. 



"'Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave 
A lasting chain for his own slavery ; — 
In fear and restless care that he may live 
He toils for others, who must ever be 
The joyless thralls of like captivity ; 
He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin ; 
He builds the altar, that its idol's fee 
May be his very blood ; he is pursuing 
0, blind and willing wretch ! his own obscure un- 
doing. 

XV. 

"'Woman! — she is his slave, she has become 
A thing I weep to speak — the child of scorn, 
The outcast of a desolated home. 
Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn 
Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn, 
As calm decks the false Ocean : — well ye know 
What Woman is, for none of Woman born 
Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe, 
Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors 
flow. 

XVI. 

" ' This need not be ; ye might arise, and will 
That gold should lose its power, and thrones their 

glory; 
That love, which none may bind, be free to fill 
The world, like light ; and evil faith, grown hoary 
With crime, be quenched and die. — Yon promon- 
Even now eclipses the descending moon ! — [tory 
Dungeons and palaces are transitory — 
High temples fade like vapour — Man alone 
Remains, whose will has power when all beside is 
gone. 

XVII. 

" ' Let all be free and equal ! — From your hearts 
I feel an echo ; through my inmost frame 
Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts — 
Whence come ye, friends % Alas, I cannot name 
All that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame, 
On your worn faces ; as in legends old 
Which make immortal the disastrous fame 
Of conquerors and impostors false and bold, 
The discord of your hearts I in your looks behold. 



i 






THE KKVOLT OF ISLAM. 



••' Wbenoe oomeye, friends 1 brain pouring human 
blood 

Forth on the earth I or bring ye steel and gold, 
That Kings may dupe ami slay the multitude ! 
Or i'rom the famished poor, pale, weak, and cold, 
Bear ye the earnings of their toil? unfold! 
Speak ! are your hands in slaughter's sanguine hue 
Stam'dfreehly! have your hearts in guilegrown old! 
Know yourselves thus I ye shall he pure as dew, 
And I will be a friend and sister unto you. 



•• • Pi>guisc it not — we have one human heart — 
All mortal thoughts confess a common home : 
Blush not for what may to thyself impart 
Stains of inevitable crime : the doom 
Is this, which has, or may, or must, become 
Thine, and all humankind's. Ye are the spoil 
Which Time thus marks for the devouring 

tomb, 
Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil 
Wherewith ye twine the rings of life's perpetual 

coil. 

XX. 

" ' Disguise it not — ye blush for what ye hate, 
And Enmity is sister unto Shame ; 
Look on your mind — it is the book of fate — 
Ah ! it is dark with many a blazoned name 
Of misery — all are mirrors of the same ; 
But the dark fiend who with his iron pen, 
Dipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his fame 
Enduring there, would o'er the heads of men 
Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts 
his den. 

XXI. 

tt * Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing 
Of many names, all evil, some divine, 
Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting ; 
Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine, 
Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine 
To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside 
It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine 
When Amphisbsena some fair bird has tied, 
Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on every side. 



" ' Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself, 
Nor hate another's crime, nor loathe thine own. 
It is the dark idolatry of self, [gone, 

Which, when our thoughts and actions once are 
Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and 
O vacant expiation ! be at rest. — [groan ; 

The past is Death's, the future is thine own ; 
And love and joy can make the foulest breast 
A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her 
nest.' 

XXIII. 

ut Speak thou! whence come ye?' — A Youth made 
' Wearily, wearily o'er the boundless deep [reply, 
We sail ; — thou readest well the misery 
Told in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep 
Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep, 
Or dare not write on the dishonoured brow ; 
Even from our childhood have we learned to steep 
The bread of slavery in the tears of woe, 
And never dreamed of hope or refuge until now. 



a t Yes— I must speak— my secret would have 

perished 
Even with the heart it wasted, as a brand 
Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished, 
But that no human bosom can withstand 
Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command 
Of thy keen eyes : — yes, we are wretched slaves, 
Who from their wonted loves and native land 
Are reft, and bear o'er the dividing waves 
The unregarded prey of calm and happy graves. 



" ' We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest 
Among the daughters of those mountains lone, 
We drag them there, where all things best and 
rarest [gone 

Are stained and trampled : — years have come and 
Since, like the ship which bears me, I have known 
No thought ; — but now the eyes of one dear Maid 
On mine with light of mutual love have shone — 
She is my life, — I am but as the shade 
Of her, — a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade. 



XXVI. 

" i For she must perish in the tyrant's hall — 
Alas, alas ! ' — He ceased, and by the sail 
Sate cowering — but his sobs were heard by all, 
And still before the ocean and the gale 
The ship fled fast till the stars 'gan to fail. 
All round me gathered with mute countenance, 
The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale 
With toil, the Captain with grey locks, whose glance 
Met mine in restless awe — they stood as in a trance. 



" 'Recede not ! pause not now! thou art grown old, 
But Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth 
Are children of one mother, even Love — behold ! 
The eternal stars gaze on us ! — is the truth 
Within your soul? care for your own, or ruth 
For other's sufferings ? do ye thirst to bear 
A heart which not the serpent custom's tooth 
May violate? — Be free ! and even here, 
Swearto be firm till death ! ' They cried, * We swear! 
we swear ! ' 

XXVIII. 

" The very darkness shook, as with a blast 
Of subterranean thunder at the cry ; 
The hollow shore its thousand echoes cast 
Into the night, as if the sea, and sky, 
And earth, rejoiced with new-born liberty, 
For in that name they swore ! Bolts were undrawn, 
And on the deck, with unaccustomed eye 
The captives gazing stood, and every one 
Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance 
shone. 

XXIX. 

"They were earth's purest children, young and fair, 
With eyes the shrines of unawakened thought, 
And brows as bright as spring or morning, ere 
Dark time had there its evil legend wrought 
In characters of cloud which wither not. — 
The change was like a dream to them ; but soon 
They knew the glory of their altered lot, 
In the bright wisdom of youth's breathless noon, 
Sweet talk, and smiles, and sighs, all bosoms did 
attune. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



83 



" But one was mute, her cheeks and lips most fair, 
Changing their hue like lilies newly blown, 
Beneath a bright acacia's shadowy hair, 
Waved by the wind amid the sunny noon, 
Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon 
That Youth arose, and breathlessly did look 
On her and me, as for some speechless boon : 
I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took, 
And felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook. 



CANTO IX. 



" That night we anchored in a woody bay, 
And sleep no more around us dared to hover 
Than, when all doubt and fear has past away, 
It shades the couch of some unresting lover, 
Whose heart is now at rest r thus night past over 
In mutual joy : — around, a forest grew 
Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover 
The waning stars, prankt in the waters blue, 

And trembled in the wind which from the morning 
flew. 

ii. 
" The joyous mariners, and each free maiden, 
Now brought from the deep forest many a bough, 
With woodland spoil most innocently laden ; 
Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow 
Over the mast and sails, the stern and prow 
Were canopied with blooming boughs, — the while 
On the slant sun's path o'er the waves we go 
Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle 

Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease 
to smile. 

nr. 
" The many ships spotting the dark blue deep 
With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh, 
In fear and wonder ; and on every steep 
Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry, 
Like earth's own voice lifted unconquerably 
To all her children, the unbounded mirth, 
The glorious joy of thy name — Liberty ! 
They heard ! — As o'er the mountains of the earth 

From peak to peak leap on the beams of morning's 
birth : 

IV. 

" So from that cry over the boundless hills, 
Sudden was caught one universal sound, 
Like a volcano's voice, whose thunder fills 
Remotest skies, — such glorious madness found 
A path through human hearts with stream which 

drowned 
Its struggling fears and cares, dark custom's brood ; 
They knew not whence it came, but felt around 
A wide contagion poured — they called aloud 
On Liberty — that name lived on the sunny flood. 



" We reached the port — alas ! from many spirits 
The wisdom which had waked that cry, was fled, 
Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits 
From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread, 
Upon the night's devouring darkness shed : 
Yet soon bright day will burst — even like a chasm 
Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead, 
Which wrap the world ; a wide enthusiasm, 
To cleanse the fevered world as with an earth- 
quake's spasm ! 



" I walked through the great City then, but free 
From shame or fear ; those toil-worn Mariners 
And happy Maidens did encompass me ; 
And like a subterranean wind that stirs 
Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears 
From every human soul, a murmur strange 
Made as I past ; and many wept, with tears 
Of joy and awe, and winged thoughts did range, 
And half-extinguished words, which prophesied of 
change. 



" For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid 
Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love, — 
As one who from some mountain's pyramid, 
Points to the unrisen sun ! — the shades approve 
His truth, and flee from every stream and 

grove. 
Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill, — 
Wisdom the mail of tried affections wove 
For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill 
Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable 

will. 



a Some said I was a maniac wild and lost ; 
Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave 
The Prophet's virgin bride, a heavenly ghost : — 
Some said I was a fiend from my weird cave, 
Who had stolen human shape, and o'er the wave, 
The forest, and the mountain, came ; — some said 
I was the child of God, sent down to save 
Women from bonds and death, and on my head 
The burthen of their sins would frightfully be laid. 



" But soon my human words found sympathy 
In human hearts : the purest and the best, 
As friend with friend made common cause with me, 
And they were few, but resolute ; — the rest, 
Ere yet success the enterprise had blest, 
Leagued with me in their hearts ;— their meals, their 
Their hourly occupations, were possest [slumber, 
By hopes which I had armed to overnumber 
Those hosts of meaner eares, which life's strong 
wings encumber. 

X. 

" But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken 
From their cold, careless, willing slavery, 
Sought me : one truth their dreary prison has 

shaken, 
They looked around, and lo ! they became free ! 
Their many tyrants sitting desolately 
In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain ; 
For wrath's red fire had withered in the eye, 
Whose lightning once was death,— nor fear, nor gain 
Could tempt one captive now to lock another's 

chain. 

XI. 

" Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt 
Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them 
Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt [round, 
In the white furnace ; and a visioned swound, 
A pause of hope and awe, the City bound, 
Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth, 
When in its awful shadow it has wound 
The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth, 
Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leapt 
forth. 



"4 



TIIE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



'* Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky, 
By winds from distant regions meeting there, 
In the high name of truth and liberty, 
Around the City millions gathered were, 

l>y hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair; 
Words, which the lore of truth in hues of grace 

Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air 
Like homeless odours Hoated, and the name 
Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped 
in flame. 

XIII. 

" The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear, 
The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event — 
That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer, 
And whatsoe'er, when force is impotent, 
To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent, 
Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway. 
Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he 
To curse the rebels. — To their gods did they [sent 
For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the 
public way. 

XIV. 

" And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell 
From seats where law is made the slave of wrong, 
How glorious Athens in her splendour fell, 
Because her sons were free, — and that among 
Mankind, the many to the few belong, 
By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity. 
They said, that age was truth, and that the young 
Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery, 
With which old times and men had quelled the vain 
and free. 

XV. 

" And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips 
They breathed on the enduring memory 
Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse ; 
There was one teacher, whom necessity 
Had armed with strength and wrong against man- 
His slave and his avenger aye to be ; [kind, 

That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind, 
And that the will of one was peace, and we 
Shouldseek fornought on earth but toil and misery. 



" ' For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter. 
So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied ; 
Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter 
Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride 
Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide ; 
And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow, 
And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue, and 

wide, 
Said, that the rule of men was over now, 
And hence, the subject world to woman's will must 
bow : 



" And gold was scattered through the streets, and 
Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall, [wine 
In vain ! The steady towers in Heaven did shine 
As they were wont, nor at the priestly call 
Left Plague her banquet in the ^Ethiop's hall, 
Nor Famine from the rich man's portal came, 
Where at her ease she ever preys on all 
Who throng to kneel for food: nor fear, nor shame, 
Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope's newly -kindled 
flame. 



" For gold was as a god whose faith began 
To fade, so that its worshippers were few, 
And Faith itself, which in the heart of man 
Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew 
Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew, 
Till the Priests stood alone within the fane ; 
The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew, 
And the cold sneers of calumny were vain 
The union of the free with discord's brand to staii; . 



"The rest thou knowest — Lo ! — we two are here — 
We have survived a ruin wide and deep — 
Strange thoughts are mine. — I cannot grieve nor 
Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep [fear, 
I smile, though human love should make me weep. 
We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow, 
And I do feel a mighty calmness creep 
Over my heart, which can no longer borrow 
Its hues from chance or change, dark children of 
to-morrow. 

XX. 

" We know not what will come — yet, Laon, dearest, 
Cythna shall be the prophetess of love, 
Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest, 
To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove 
Within the homeless future's wiutry grove ; 
For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem 
Even with thy breath and blood to live and move, 
And violence and wrong are as a dream 
Which rolls from steadfast truth, an unreturning 
stream. 



" The blasts of autumn drive the winged seeds 
Over the earth, — next come the snows, and rain, 
And frosts, and storms, which dreary winter leads 
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train ; 
Behold ! Spring sweeps over the world again, 
Shedding soft dews from her setherial wings ; 
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, 
And music on the waves and woods she flings, 
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless 
things. 

XXII. 

"0 Spring! of hope,andlove,andyouth,and gladness, 
Wind-winged emblem ! brightest, best, and faix^est ! 
Whence comest thou, when, with dark winter's 

sadness 
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest* 
Sister of joy ! thou art the child who wearest 
Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet ; 
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest 
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle 

feet, [sheet. 

Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding- 



" Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven, 
Surround the world. — We are their chosen slaves. 
Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven 
Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves? 
Lo, Winter comes ! — the grief of many graves, 
The frost of death, the tempest of the sword, 
The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves 
Stagnate like ice at Faith, the enchanter's word, 
And bind all human hearts in its repose abhoxTed 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



8fi 



<k The seeds are sleeping in the soil : meanwhile 
The tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey ; 
Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile 
Because they cannot speak ; and, day by day, 
The moon of wasting Science wanes away 
Among her stars, and in that darkness vast 
The sons of earth to their foul idols pi-ay, 
And grey Priests triumph, and like blight or blast 
A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast. 



" This is the Winter of the world ; — and here 
We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade, 
Expiring in the frore and foggy air. — [made 
Behold ! Spring comes, though we must pass, who 
The promise of its birth, — even as the shade 
Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings 
The future, a broad sunrise ; thus arrayed 
As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, 
From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle 
springs. 

XXVI. 

" dearest love ! we shall be dead and cold 
Before this mora may on the world arise : 
Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold ? 
Alas ! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes 
On thine own heart — it is a paradise 
Which everlasting spring has made its own, 
And while drear Winter fills the naked skies, 
Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh 
blown 
Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into 



" In their own hearts the earnest of the hope 
Which made them great, the good will ever find ; 
And though some envious shade may interlope 
Between the effect and it, one comes behind, 
Who aye the future to the past will bind — 
Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever 
Evil with evil, good with good, must wind 
In bands of union, which no power may sever : 
They must bring forth their land, and be divided 
never ! 

XX VIII. 

" The good and mighty of departed ages 
Are in their graves, the innocent and free, 
Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages, 
Who leave the vesture of their majesty 
To adorn and clothe this naked world ; — and we 
Are like to them — such perish, but they leave 
All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty, 
Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive 
To be a rule and law to ages that survive. 



" So be the turf heaped over our remains 
Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot 
Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins 
The blood is still, be ours ; let sense and 

thought 
Pass from our being, or be numbered not 
Among the things that are ; let those who come 
Behind, for whom our stedfast will has bought 
A calm inheritance, a glorious doom, 
Insult with careless tread our undivided tomb. 



" Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love, 
Our happiness, and all that we have been, 
Immortally must live, and burn, and move, 
When we shall be no more ; the world has seen 
A type of peace ; and as some most serene 
And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye, 
After long years, some sweet and moving scene 
Of youthful hope returning suddenly, 
Quells his long madness — thus man shall remem- 
ber thee. 

XXXI. 

u And calumny meanwhile shall feeH on us, 
As worms devour the dead, and near the throne 
And at the altar, most accepted thus 
Shall sneers and curses be ; — what we have done 
None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known ; 
That record shall remain, when they must pass 
Who built their pride on its oblivion ; 
And fame, in human hope which sculptured was, 
Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass. 



a The while we two, beloved, must depart, 
And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair, 
Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart 
That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair : 
These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly 

there 
To fade in hideous ruin ; no calm sleep 
Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air, 
Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep 
In joy; — but senseless death — a ruin dark and 

deep ! 

XXXIII. 

These are blind fancies. Reason cannot know 
What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive ; 
There is delusion in the world — and woe, 
And fear, and pain — we know not whence we live, 
Or w T hy, or how, or what mute Power may give 
Their being to each plant, and star, and beast, 
Or even these thoughts. — Come near me ! I do 
A chain I cannot break — I am possest [weaAe 
With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone 
human breast. 

XXXIV. 

" Yes, yes — thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm — 
! willingly, beloved, would these eyes, 
Might they no more drink being from thy form, 
Even as to sleep whence we again arise, 
Close their faint orbs in death. I fear nor prize 
Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee — 
Yes, Love, when wisdom fails, makes Cythnawise ; 
Darkness and death, if death be true, must be 
Dearer than life and hope, if unenjoyed with thee. 

XXXV. 

" Alas ! our thoughts flow on with stream, whose 

waters 
Return not to their fountain — Earth and Heaven, 
The Ocean and the Sun, the clouds their daughters, 
Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and 
All that we are or know, is darkly driven [Even, 
Towards one gulf. — Lo ! what a change is come 
Since I first, spake — but time shall be forgiven, 
Though it change all but thee !" She ceased — 
night's gloom [dome. 

Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's sunless 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



Though Bhe had ceased, her countenance, uplifted 
To heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright ; 
Her dark deep eves, her lips, whose motionsgiftod 
The air they breathed with love, her loeks undight ; 
" Fairstar of life and love," 1 cried," my soul's de- 
Why lookesl thou on the crystalline skies * [light, 
O that my spirit were yon Heaven of night, 
Which gases on thee with its thousand eyes!" 
She turned to me and smiled — that smile was 
Paradise ! 



CANTO X. 
i. 
Was there a human spirit in the steed, 
That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone, 
He broke our linked rest ? or do indeed 
All living things a common nature own, 
And thought erect a universal throne, 
Where many shapes one tribute ever bear ? 
And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan 
To see her sons contend ? and makes she bare 

Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores 
may share ? 

ii. 
I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue 
Which was not human — the lone Nightingale 
Has answered me with her most soothing song, 
Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale 
With grief, and sighed beneath ; from many a dale 
The Antelopes who flocked for food have spoken 
With happy sounds, and motions, that avail 
Like man's own speech ; and such was now the token 

Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh 
was broken. 

in. 
Each night, that mighty steed bore me abroad, 
And I returned with food to our retreat, 
And dark intelligence ; the blood which flowed 
Over the fields, had stained the courser's feet ; — 
Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew, — then meet 
The vulture, and the wild-dog, and the snake, 
The wolf, and the hyaena grey, and eat 
The dead in horrid truce : their throngs did make 

Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship's wake. 

IV. 

For, from the utmost realms of earth, came 

pouring 
The banded slaves whom every despot sent 
At that throned traitor's summons ; like the roaring 
Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent 
In the scorched pastures of the South ; so bent 
The armies of the leagued kings around 
Their files of steel and flame ; — the continent 
Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound ; 

Beneath their feet, the sea shook with their navies' 
sound. 

v. 
From every nation of the earth they came, 
The multitude of moving heartless things, 
Whom slaves call men : obediently they came, 
Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings 
To the stall, red with blood ; their many kings 
Led them, thus erring, from their native home ; 
Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings 
Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band 

The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea's sand, 



Fertile in prodigies and lies ; so there 

Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill. 
The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear 
His Asian shield and bow, when, at the will 
Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt would kill 
Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure ; 
But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill, 
And savage sympathy : those slaves impure, 
Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure. 



For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe 
His countenance in lies ; — even at the hour 
When he was snatched from death, then o'er the 

globe, 
With secret signs from many a mountain tower, 
With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power 
Of kings and priests, those dark conspirators 
He called : — they knew his cause their own, and 

swore 
Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars 
Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and 

Heaven abhors. 



Myriads had come — millions were on their way ; 
The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel 
Of hired assassins, through the public way, 
Choked with his country's dead ; — his footsteps reel 
On the fresh blood — he smiles. " Aye, now I feel 
I am a King in truth !" he said, and took 
His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel 
Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook, 
And scorpions ! that his soul on its revenge might 
look. 

IX. 

u But first, go slay the rebels. — Why return 
The victor bands ?" he said : " millions yet live, 
Of whom the weakest with one word might turn 
The scales of victory yet ; — let none survive 
But those within the walls — each fifth shall give 
The expiation for his brethren here. — 
Go forth, and waste and kill ;" — " king, forgive 
My speech," a soldier answered ; — " but we fear 
The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near ; 

X. 

" For we were slaying still without remorse, 
And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand 
Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse, 
An Angel bright as day, waving a brand 
Which flashed among the stars, passed." — u Dost 

thou stand 
Parleying with me, thou wretch ?" the king replied ; 
" Slaves, bind him to the wheel ; and of this band, 
Whoso will drag that woman to his side 
That scared him thus, may burn his dearest foe 

beside ; 

XI. 

" And gold and glory shall be his. — Go forth !" 
They rushed into the plain. — Loud was the roar 
Of their career : the horsemen shook the earth ; 
The wheeled artillery's speed the pavement tore ; 
The infantry, file after file, did pour [slew 

Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they 
Among the wasted fields : the sixth saw gore 
Stream through the city ; on the seventh, the dew 
Of slaughter became stiff; and there was peace anew : 






THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



B7 



Peace in the desert fields and villages, 
Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead ! 
Peace in the silent streets ! save when the cries 
Of victims, to then* fiery judgment led, 
Made pale their voiceless lips, who seemed to 

dread 
Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue 
Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed ; 
Peace in the Tyrant's palace, where the throng 
Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song ! 



Day after day the burning Sun rolled on 
Over the death-polluted land ; — it came 
Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone 
A lamp of Autumn, ripening with its flame 
The few lone ears of corn ; — the sky became 
Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast 
Languished and died ; the thirsting air did claim 
All moisture, and a rotting vapour past 
From the unburied dead, invisible and fast. 



First Want, then Plague, came on the beasts ; their 
Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay, [food 
Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood 
Had lured, or who, from regions far away, 
Had tracked the hosts in festival array, 
From their dark deserts ; gaunt and wasting now, 
Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey ; 
In their green eyes a strange disease did glow, 
They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and 
slow. 

XV. 

The fish w r ere poisoned in the streams ; the birds 
In the green woods perished ; the insect race 
Was withered up ; the scattered flocks and herds 
Who had survived the wild beasts' hungry chase 
Died moaning, each upon the other's face 
In helpless agony gazing ; round the City 
All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case 
Like starving infants wailed — a woeful ditty ! 
And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural 
pity. 

XVI. 

Amid the aerial minarets on high, 
The ^Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell 
From their long line of brethren in the sky, 
Startling the concourse of mankind. — Too well 
These signs the coming mischief did foretell : — 
Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread 
Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell, 
A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread 
With the quick glance of eyes, like withering 

lightnings shed. 

xvn. 
Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts 
Strip its green crown of leaves, till all is bare ; 
So on those strange and congi'egated hosts 
Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air 
Groaned with the burden of a new despair ; 
Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter 
Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping 

there [Slaughter, 

With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and 

A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe's sullen 

water. 



There was no food ; the corn was trampled down, 
The flocks and herds had perished ; on the shore 
The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown : 
The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more 
Creaked with the weight of birds, but, as before 
Those winged things sprang forth, were void of 

shade ; 
The vines and orchards, Autumn's golden store, 
Were burned ; so that the meanest food was weighed 
With gold, and Avarice died before the god it made. 



There was no corn — in the wide market-place 
All loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold ; 
They weighed it in small scales — and many a face 
Was fixed in eager horror then : his gold 
The miser brought ; the tender maid, grown bold 
Through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain ; 
The mother brought her eldest-born, controlled 
By instinct blind as love, but turned again 
And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain. 



Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man. 
(( O, for the sheathed steel, so late which gave 
Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran [grave 
With brothers' blood ! 0, that the earthquake's 
Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave !" 
Vain cries — throughout the streets, thousands 
Each by his fiery torture, howl and rave, [pursued 
Or sit, in frenzy's unimagined mood, 
Upon fresh heaps of dead — a ghastly multitude. 



It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well 
Was choked with rotting corpses, and became 
A cauldron of green mist made visible 
At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came, 
Seeking to quench the agony of the flame [veins ; 
Which raged like poison through their bursting 
Naked they were from torture, without shame, 
Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains, 
Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage 
pains. 

XXII. 

It was not thirst but madness ! Many saw 
Their own lean image everywhere ; it went 
A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe 
Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent 
Those shrieking victims ; some, ere life was spent, 
Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed 
Contagion on the sound ; and others rent 
Their matted hair, and cried aloud, " We tread 
On fire ! the avenging Power his hell on earth has 
spread." 

XXIII. 

Sometimes the living by the dead were hid. 
Near the great fountain in the public square, 
Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid 
Under the sun, was heard one stifled prayer 
For life, in the hot silence of the air ; 
And strange 'twas, amid that hideous heap 

to see 
Some shrouded in their long and golden hair, 
As if not dead, but slumbering quietly, 
Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to 
agony. 






THE REVOLT OF [SLAM. 



Famine had spared the palace of the king: — 
lie rioted in festival the while. 
He and his guards and priests ; but Plague did fling 
One shadow upon all. Famine can smile 
On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile 
Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier grey, 
The house-dog of the throne ; but many a mile 
Comes Plague, a winged wolf, who loathes alway 
The garbage and the scum that strangers make 
her prey. 

XXV. 

So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast, 
Sheathed in resplendent arms, or loosely dight 
To luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased 
That lingered on his lips, the warrior's might 
Was loosened, and a new and ghastlier night 
In dreams of frenzy lapped his eyes ; he fell 
Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate upright 
Among the guests, or raving mad, did tell 
Strange truths ; a dying seer of dark oppression's 
hell. 



The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror ; 
That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled man- 
Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman's error,[kind 
On their own hearts : they sought and they could 
No refuge — 'twas the blind who led the blind! [find 
So, through the desolate streets to the high fane, 
The many-tongued and endless armies wind 
In sad procession : each among the train 
To his own Idol lifts his supplications vain. 



" O God !" they cried, " we know our secret pride 
Has scorned thee, and thy worship, and thy name ; 
Secure in human power, we have defied 
Thy fearful might ; we bend in fear and shame 
Before thy presence ; with the dust we claim 
Kindred. Be merciful, King of Heaven ! 
Most justly have we suffered for thy fame 
Made dim, but be at length our sins forgiven, 
Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be 
driven. 

XXVIII. 

" O King of Glory ! Thou alone hast power ! 
Who can resist thy will ? who can restrain 
Thy wrath, when on the guilty thou dost shower 
The shafts of thy revenge, — a blistering rain ? 
Greatest and best, be merciful again ! 
Have we not stabbed thine enemies, and made 
The Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane, [laid 
Where thou wert worshipped with their blood, and 
Those hearts in dust which would thy searchless 
works have weighed ? 

XXIX. 

" Well didst thou loosen on this impious City 
Thine angels of revenge : recall them now ; 
Thy worshippers abased, here kneel for pity, 
And bind their souls by an immortal vow : 
We swear by thee ! And to our oath do thou 
Give sanction, from thine hell of fiends and flame, 
That we will kill with fire and torments slow, 
The last of those who mocked thy holy name, 
And scorned the sacred laws thy prophets did 
proclaim." 



Thus they with trembling limits and pallid lips 
Worshipped their own hearts' image, dim and vast, 
Seared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse 
The light of other minds; — troubled they past 
From the great Temple. Fiercely still and fast 
The arrows of the plague among them fell, 
And they on one another gazed aghast, 
And through the hosts contention wild befell, 
As each of his own god the wondrous works did 
tell. 

XXXI. 

And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet, [Foh, 
Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and 
A tumult of strange names, which never met 
Before, as watch-words of a single woe, 
Arose. Each raging votary 'gan to throw 
Aloft his armed hands, and each did howl 
" Our God alone is God ! " and slaughter now 
Would have gone forth, when, from beneath a cowl, 
A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through 
every soul. 

XXXII. 

'Twas an Iberian Priest from whom it came, 
A zealous man, who led the legioned west 
With words which faith and pride had steeped in 
To quell the unbelievers ; a dire guest [flame, 
Even to his friends was he, for in his breast 
Did hate and guile he watchful, intertwined, 
Twin serpents in one deep and winding nest ; 
He loathed all faith beside his own, and pined 
To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on 
mankind. 

XXXIII. 

But more he loathed and hated the clear light 
Of wisdom and free thought, and more did fear, 
Lest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night, 
Even where his Idol stood ; for, far and near 
Did many a heart in Europe leap to hear 
That faith and tyranny were trampled down ; 
Many a pale victim, doomed for truth to share 
The murderer's cell, or see, with helpless groan, 
The priests his children drag for slaves to serve 
their own. 

XXXIV. 

He dared not kill the infidels with fire 
Or steel, in Europe : the slow agonies 
Of legal torture mocked his keen desire : 
So he made truce with those who did despise 
The expiation, and the sacrifice, 
That, though detested, Islam's kindred creed 
Might crush for him those deadlier enemies ; 
For fear of God did in his bosom breed 
A jealous hate of man, an unreposing need. 



" Peace ! Peace !" he cried. "When we are dead, 

the Day 
Of Judgment comes, and all shall surely know 
Whose God is God, each fearfully shall pay 
The errors of his faith in endless woe ! 
But there is sent a mortal vengeance now 
On earth, because an impious race had spurned 
Him whom we all adore, — a subtile foe, 
By whom for ye this dread reward was earned, 
And kingly thrones, which rest on faith, nigh over- 
turned. 






THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



" Thins ye, because we weep, and kneel, and pray, 
That God will lull the pestilence ? It rose 
Even from beneath his throne, where, many a day 
His mercy soothed it to a dark repose : 
It walks upon the earth to judge his foes, 
And what art thou and I, that he should deign 
To curb his ghastly minister, or close 
The gates of death, ere they receive the twain 
Who shook with mortal spells his undefended reign? 



" Aye, there is famine in the gulf of hell, 
Its giant worms of fire for ever yawn, — 
Their lurid eyes are on us ! Those who fell 
By the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn, 
Are in their jaws ! They hunger for the spawn 
Of Satan, their own brethren, who were sent 
To make our souls their spoil. See ! see ! they fawn 
Like dogs, and they will sleep with luxury spent, 

When those detested hearts their iron fangs have 
rent ! 

xxxvni. 
" Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep : — 
Pile high the pyre of expiation now ! 
A forest's spoil of boughs, and on the heap 
Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow, 
When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, 

and flow, 
A stream of clinging fire, — and fix on high 
A net of iron, and spread forth below 
A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry 

Of centipedes and worms, earth's hellish progeny ! 



" Let Laon and Laone on that pyre, 

Linked tight with burning brass, perish ! — then 

pray 
That, with this sacrifice, the withering ire 
Of Heaven may be appeased." He ceased, and they 
A space stood silent, as far, far away 
The echoes of his voice among them died ; 
And he knelt down upon the dust, alway 
Muttering the curses of his speechless pride, 
Whilst shame, and fear, and awe, the armies did 

divide. 

XL. 

His voice was like a blast that burst the portal 
Of fabled hell ; and as he spake, each one 
Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire immortal, 
And Heaven above seemed cloven, where, on a 

throne 
Girt round with storms and shadows, sate alone 
Their King and Judge. Fear killed in every breast 
All natural pity then, a fear unknown 
Before, and with an inward fire possest, 
They raged like homeless beasts whom burning 
woods invest. 

JBCJ. 

'Twas morn. — At noon the public crier went forth, 
Proclaiming through the living and the dead, 
"The Monarch saith, that his great empire's worth 
Is set on Laon and Laone's head : 
He who but one yet living here can lead, 
Or who the life from both their hearts can wring, 
Shall be the kingdom's heir, — a glorious meed ! 
But he who both alive can hither bring, 
The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal 
King." 



Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron 
Was spread above, the fearful couch below ; 
It overtopped the towers that did environ 
That spacious square ; for Fear is never slow 
To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe, 
So, she scourged forth the maniac multitude 
To rear this pyramid — tottering and slow, 
Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued 
By gad-flies, they have piled the heath, and gums, 
and wood. 

XLIII. 

Night came, a starless and a moonless gloom. 
Until the dawn, those hosts of many a nation 
Stood round that pile, as near one lover's tomb 
Two gentle sisters mourn their desolation ; 
And in the silence of that expectation, 
Was heard on high the reptiles' hiss and crawl — 
It was so deep, save when the devastation 
Of the swift pest with fearful interval, 
Marking its path with shrieks, among the crowd 
would fall. 

XLIV. 

Morn came Among those sleepless multitudes, 

Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine, still 
Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods 
The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill 
Earth's cold and sullen brooks. In silence still 
The pale survivors stood ; ere noon, the fear 
Of hell became a panic, which did kill 
Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear, 
As " Hush ! hark ! Come they yet? Just Heaven! 
thine hour is near ! " 



And Priests rushed through their ranks, some 

counterfeiting 
The rage they did inspire, some mad indeed 
With their own lies. They said their god was waiting 
To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed, — 
And that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need 

Of human souls Three hundred furnaces [speed, 

Soon blazed through the wide City, where, with 
Men brought their infidel kindred to appease 
God's wrath, and while they burned, knelt round 

on quivering knees. 



The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke, 
The winds of eve dispersed those ashes grey. 
The madness which these rites had lulled, awoke 
Again at sunset. — Who shall dare to say 
The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or 
In balance just the good and evil there ? [weigh 
He might man's deep and searchless heart display, 
And cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where 
Hope, near imagined chasms, is struggling with 
despair. 

XLVII. 

'Tis said, a mother dragged three children then, 
To those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the 
Andlaughedand died; and that unholy men, [head, 
Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead, 
Looked from their meal, and saw an Angel tread 
The visible floor of Heaven, and it was she ' 
And, on that night, one without doubt or dread 
Came to the fire, and said, " Stop, I am he ! 
Kill me!" — They burned them both with hellish 
mockerv. 



JO 



THE REVOLT OF [SLAM. 



And, one by one, that night, young maidens came, 
Beauteous ami calm, like shapes of living stone 

Clothed in the light oi' dreams, and by the Same 
Which shrank as overgorgod,they laid them down. 
And Sling a low BWeet Song, of which alone 

One word was heard, and that was Liberty ; 
And that some kissed their marble feet, with moan 
Like love, and died, and then that they did die 
With happy smiles, whiehsnnkin white tranquillity. 



CANTO XL 

i. 
She saw me not — she heard me not — alone 
Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood ; 
She spake not, breathed not, moved not — there 
Over her look, the shadow of a mood [was thrown 
Which only clothes the heart in solitude, 
A thought of voiceless death. — She stood alone, 
Above, the Heavens were spread ; — below, the flood 
Was murmuring in its caves; — the wind had blown 

Her hair apart, thro' which her eyes and forehead 
shone. 

n. 
A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains ; 
Before its blue and moveless depth were flying [tains 
Grey mists poured forth from the unresting foun- 
Of darkness in the North : — the day was dying: — 
Sudden, the sun shone forth; its beams were lying 
Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see, 
And on the shattered vapours, which, defying 
The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly 

In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea. 



It was a stream of living beams, whose bank 
On either side by the cloud's cleft was made ; 
And where its chasms that flood of glory drank, 
Its waves gushed forth like fire, and, as if swayed 
By some mute tempest, rolled on her. The shade 
Of her bright image floated on the river 
Of liquid light, which then did end and fade — 
Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver ; 

Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did 
quiver. 

rv. 
I stood beside her, but she saw me not — 
She looked upon the sea, and skies, and eai'th. 
Rapture, and love, and admiration, wrought 
A passion deeper far than tears, or mirth, 
Or speech, or gesture, or whate'er has birth 
From common joy ; which, with the speechless 
That led her there, united, and shot forth [feeling 
From her far eyes, a light of deep revealing, 

All but her dearest self from my regard concealing. 



Her lips were parted, and the measured breath 
Was now heard there ; — her dark and intricate 
Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death, [eyes 
Absorbed the glories of the burning skies, 
Which, mingling with her heart's deep ecstacies, 
Burst from her looks and gestures ; — and a light 
Of liquid tenderness, like love, did rise [quite 
From her whole frame, — an atmosphere which 
Arrayed her in its beams, tremulous and soft and 
bright. 



She would have clasped me to her glowing frame ; 
Those warm and odorous lips might soon haveshed 
On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame 
Which now the cold winds stole ; — she would have 

laid 
Upon my languid heart her dearest head ; 
I might have heard her voice, tender and sweet ; 
Her eyes mingling with mine, might soon have fed 
My soul with their own joy.— One moment yet 
1 gazed — we parted then, never again to meet ! 



Never but once to meet on earth again ! 
She heard me as I fled — her eager tone 
Sank on my heart, and almost wove a chain 
Around my will to link it with her own, 
So that my stern resolve was almost gone. 
" I cannot reach thee ! whither dost thou fly ? 
My steps are faint. — Come back, thou dearest 

one — 
Return, ah me ! return ! " The wind passed by 
On which those accents died, faint, far, and lin- 
geringly. 

VIII. 

Woe ! woe ! that moonless midnight. — Want and 
Were horrible, but one more fell doth rear,[Pest 
As in a hydra's swarming lair, its crest 
Eminent among those victims — even the Fear 
Of Hell : each girt by the hot atmosphere 
Of his blind agony, like a scorpion stung 
By his own rage upon his burning bier 
Of circling coals of fire ; but still there clung 
One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads 
uphung : 

IX. 

Not death — death was no more refuge or rest ; 
Not life — it was despair to be ! — not sleep, 
For fiends and chasms of fire had dispossessed 
All natural dreams ; to wake was not to weep, 
But to gaze mad and pallid, at the leap 
To which the Future, like a snaky scourge, 
Or like some tyrant's eye, which aye doth keep 
Its withering beam upon his slaves, did urge 

Their steps : — they heard the roar of Hell's sul- 
phureous surge. 

x. 
Each of that multitude alone, and lost 
To sense of outward things, one hope yet knew ; 
As on a foam-girt crag some seaman tost, 
Stares at the rising tide, or like the crew [through; 
Whilst now the ship is splitting through and 
Each, if the tramp of a far steed was heard, 
Started from sick despair, or if there flew 
One murmur on the wind, or if some word 

Which none can gather yet, the distant crowd has 
stirred. 

XI. 

Why became cheeks, wan with the kiss of death, 
Paler from hope ? they had sustained despair. 
Why watched those myriads with suspended breath 
Sleepless a second night ? they are not here 
The victims, and hour by hour, a vision drear, 
Warm corpses fall upon the clay-cold dead ; 
And even in death their lips are writhed with fear. 
The crowd is mute and moveless — overhead 
Silent Arcturus shines— Ha! hear'st thou not the 
tread 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



91 



Of rushing feet ? laughter ? the shout, the scream, 
Of triumph not to be contained ? See ! hark ! 
They come, they come ! give way ! Alas, ye deem 
Falsely — 'tis but a crowd of maniacs stark 
Driven, like a troop of spectres, through the dark 
From the choked well, whence a bright death-fire 

sprung, 
A lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark 
From its blue train, and spreading widely, clung 
To their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines 

among. 

XIII. 

And many, from the crowd collected there, 
Joined that strange dance in fearful sympathies ; 
There was the silence of a long despair, 
When the last echo of those terrible cries 
Came from a distant street, like agonies 

Stifled afar Before the Tyrant's throne 

All night his aged Senate sate, their eyes 
In stony expectation fixed ; when one 
Sudden before them stood, a Stranger and alone. 



Dark Priests and haughty Warriors gazed on him 
With baffled wonder, for a hermit's vest 
Concealed his face ; but when he spake, his tone, 
Ere yet the matter did their thoughts arrest, 
Earnest, benignant, calm, as from a breast 
Void of all hate or terror, made them start ; 
For as with gentle accents he addressed 
His speech to them, on each unwilling heart 
Unusual awe did fall — a spirit-quelling dart. 



* Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit aghast 
Amid the ruin which yourselves have made ; 
Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's blast, 
And sprang from sleep ! — dark Terror has obeyed 
Your bidding — Oh that I, whom ye have made 
Your foe, could set my dearest enemy free 
From pain and fear ! but evil casts a shade 
Which cannot pass so soon, and Hate must be 
The nurse and parent still of an ill progeny. 



" Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your distress ; 
Alas, that ye, the mighty and the wise, 
Who, if ye dared, might not aspire to less 
Than ye conceive of power, should fear the lies 
Which thou, and thou, didst frame for mysteries 
To blind your slaves: — consider your own thought, 
An empty and a cruel sacrifice 
Ye now prepare, for a vain idol wrought 
Out of the fears and hate which vain desires have 
brought. 



" Ye seek for happiness — alas the day ! 
Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold, 
Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway 
For which, O willing slaves to Custom old, 
Severe task-mistress ! ye your hearts have sold. 
Ye seek for peace, and when ye die, to dream 
No evil dreams ; all mortal things are cold 
And senseless then. If aught survive, I deem 
It must be love and joy, for they immortal seem. 



" Fear not the future, weep not for the past. 
Oh, could I win your ears to dare be now 
Glorious, and great, and calm! that ye would cast 
Into the dust those symbols of your woe, 
Purple, and gold, and steel ! that ye would go 
Proclaiming to the nations whence ye came, 
That Want, and Plague, and Fear, from slavery 

flow ; 
And that mankind is free, and that the shame 
Of royalty and faith is lost in freedom's fame. 



" If thus 'tis well — if not, I come to say 
That Laon — ." While the Stranger spoke, among 
The Council sudden tumult and affray 
Arose, for many of those warriors young 
Had on his eloquent accents fed and hung 
Like bees on mountain-flowers ! they knew the truth, 
And from their thrones in vindication sprung ; 
The men of faith and law then without ruth 
Drew forth their secret steel, and stabbed each 
ardent youth. 

XX. 

They stabbed them in the back and sneered. A slave 
Who stood behind the throne, those corpses drew 
Each to its bloody, dark, and secret grave ; 
And one more daring raised his steel anew 
To pierce the Stranger : " What hast thou to do 
With me, poor wretch?"— Calm ,solemn, and severe, 
That voice unstrung his sinews, and he threw 
His dagger on the ground, and pale with fear, 
Sate silently — his voice then did the Stranger rear. 



" It doth avail not that I weep for ye — 
Ye cannot change, since ye are old and grey, 
And ye have chosen your lot — your fame must be 
A book of blood, whence in a milder day 
Men shall learn truth, when ye are wrapt in clay: 
Now ye shall triumph. I am Laon's friend, 
And him to your revenge will I betray, 
So ye concede one easy boon. Attend ! 
For now I speak of things which ye can apprehend. 



" There is a People mighty in its youth, 
A land beyond the Oceans of the West, [Truth 
Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and 
Are worshipped ; from a glorious mother's breast 
Who, since high Athens fell, among the rest 
Sate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe, 
By inbred monsters outraged and oppressed, 
Turns to her chainless child for succour now, 
And draws the milk of power in Wisdom's fullest 
flow. 



"This land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze 
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume 
Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze 
Of sun-rise gleams when earth is wrapt in gloom; 
An epitaph of glory for the tomb 
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made, 
Great People ! As the sands shalt thou become ; 
Thy growth is swift asmorn, when night must fade ; 
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy 
shade. 



99 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



" Yes, in the desert then is built a homo 

For Freedom. Genius is made strong to rear 

The monuments of man beneath the dome 

Of i now heaven ; myriads assemble there, 
Whom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear, 
Drive from their wasted homos. The boon I pray 
Is this, — that Cythna shall be convoyed there, — 
Nay, start not at the name — America ! 
Ami then to you this night Laon will I betray. 



u With me do what ye will. I am your foe !" 
The light of such a joy as makes the stare 
Of hungry snakes like living emeralds glow, 
Shone in a hundred human eyes. — "Where, where 
Is Laon ? haste ! fly ! drag him swiftly here ! 
We grant thy boon." — " I put no trust in ye, 
Swear by the Power ye dread." — " We swear, we 
TheStranger threw his vest back suddenly,[swear!" 
And smiled in gentle pride, and said, " Lo ! I am 
he ! " 



CANTO XII. 

i. 
The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness 
Spread through the multitudinous streets,fast flying 
Upon the winds of fear ; from his dull madness 
The starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying, 
Among the corpses in stark agony lying, 
Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope [ing 
Closed their faint eyes; from house to house reply- 
With loud acclaim, the living shook Heaven's cope, 

And filled the startled Earth with echoes : morn 
did ope 

n. 
Its pale eyes then ; and lo ! the long array 
Of guards in golden arms, and priests beside, 
Singing their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray 
The blackness of the faith it seems to hide ; 
And see, the Tyrant's gem-wrought chariot glide 
Among the gloomy cowls and glittering spears — 
A shape of light is sitting by his side, 
A child most beautiful. I' the midst appears 

Laon — exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears. 



His head and feet are bare, his hands are bound 
Behind with heavy chains, yet none do wreak 
Their scoffs on him, though myriads throng around; 
There are no sneers upon his lip which speak 
That scorn or hate has made him bold; his cheek 
Resolve has not turned pale, — his eyes are mild 
And calm, and like the morn about to break, 
Smile on mankind — his heart seems reconciled 
To all things and itself, like a reposing child. 



Tumult was in the soul of all beside, 
111 joy, or doubt, or fear ; but those who saw 
Their tranquil victim pass, felt wonder glide 
Into their brain, and became calm with awe. — 
See, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw. 
A thousand torches in the spacious square, 
Borne by the ready slaves of ruthless law, 
Await the signal round : the morning fair 
Is changed to a dim night by that unnatural glare. 



And see ! beneath a sun-bright canopy, 
Upon a platform level with the pile, 
The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high, 
Girt by the chieftains of the host. All smile 
In expectation, but one child : the while 
I, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier 
Of fire, and look around. Each distant isle 
Is dark in the bright dawn ; towers far and near 
Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmo- 
sphere. 



There was such silence through the host, as when 
An earthquake, trampling on some populous 

town, 
Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men 
Expect the second ; all were mute but one, 
That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone 
Stood up before the king, without avail, 
Pleading for Laon's life — her stifled groan 
Was heard —she trembled like an aspen pale 
Among the gloomy pines of a Norwegian vale. 



What were his thoughts linked in the morning 

sun, 
Among those reptiles, stingless with delay, 
Even like a tyrant's wrath ? — The signal-gun 
Roared — hark, again ! In that dread pause he lay 
As in a quiet dream — the slaves obey — 
A thousand torches drop, — and hark, the last 
Bursts on that awful silence. Far away 
Millions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast, 
Watch for the springing flame expectant and 

aghast. 

VIII. 

They fly — the torches fall — a cry of fear 
Has startled the triumphant ! — they recede I 
For ere the cannon's roar has died, they hear 
The tramp of hoofs like earthquake, and a steed 
Dark and gigantic, with the tempest's speed, 
Bursts through their ranks : a woman sits thereon, 
Fairer it seems than aught that earth can breed, 
Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn, 
A spirit from the caves of day-light wandering gone. 



All thought it was God's Angel come to sweep 
The lingering guilty to their fiery grave ; 
The tyrant from his throne in dread did leap, — 
Her innocence his child from fear did save. 
Scared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave 
Knelt for his mercy whom they served with blood, 
And, like the refluence of a mighty wave 
Sucked into the loud sea, the multitude 
With crushing panic, fled in terror's altered mood. 



They pause, they blush, they gaze ; a gathering shout 
Bursts like one sound from the ten thousand streams 
Of a tempestuous sea : — that sudden rout 
One checked, who never in his mildest dreams 
Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams 
Of Ins rent heart so hard and cold a creed 
Had seared with blistering ice — but he misdeems 
That he is wise, whose wounds do only bleed 
[nly for self; thus thought the Iberian Priest 
indeed ; 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



\)3 



And others, too, thought he was wise to see, 
In pain, and fear, and hate, something divine ; 
In love and beauty — no divinity. — 
Now with a bitter smile, whose light did shine 
Like a fiend's hope upon his lips and eyne, 
He said, and the persuasion of that sneer 
Rallied his trembling comrades — " Is it mine 
To stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear 
A woman ? Heaven has sent its other victim here." 



" Were it not impious," said the King, " to break 
Our holy oath !" — " Impious to keep it, say !" 
Shrieked the exulting Priest : — " Slaves, to the 
Bind her, and on my head the burthen lay [stake 
Of her just torments : — at the Judgment Day 
Will I stand up before the golden throne 
Of Heaven, and cry, to thee I did betray 
An infidel ! but for me she would have known 
Another moment's joy ! — the glory be thine own." 



They trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed, 
Pausing in breathless silence. Cythna sprung 
From her gigantic steed, who, like a shade 
Chased by the winds, those vacant streets among 
Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung 
Upon his neck, and kissed his mooned brow. 
A piteous sight, that one so fair and young, 
The clasp of such a fearful death should woo 
With smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cythna 



The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear, 
From many a tremulous eye, but, like soft dews 
Which feed spring's earliest buds, hung gathered 

there, 
Frozen by doubt, — alas ! they could not choose 
But weep ; for when her faint limbs did refuse 
To climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled ; 
And with her eloquent gestures, and the hues 
Of her quick lips, even as a weary child 
Wins sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses 

mild, 

xv. 

She won them, though unwilling, her to bind 
Near me, among the stakes. When then had fled 
One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind, 
She smiled on me, and nothing then we said, 
But each upon the other's countenance fed 
Looks of insatiate love ; the mighty veil 
Which doth divide the living and the dead 
Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale, — 
All fight in Heaven or Earth beside our love did 
fail.— 

XVI. 

Yet, — yet — one brief relapse, like the last beam 
Of dying flames, the stainless air around 
Hung silent and serene. — A blood-red gleam 
Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground 
The globed smoke. — I heard the mighty sound 
Of its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean ; 
And, through its chasms I saw, as in a swound, 
The Tyrant's child fall without life or motion 
Before his throne, subdued by some unseen 
emotion. 



And is this death ? The pyre has disappeared, 
The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng ; 
The flames grow silent — slowly there is heard 
The music of a breath-suspending song, 
Which, like the kiss of love when life is young, 
Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep ; 
With ever-changing notes it floats along, 
Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep 
A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap. 



The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand 
Wakened me then ; lo, Cythna sate reclined 
Beside me, on the waved and golden sand 
Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'ertwined [wind 
With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the 
Breathed divine odour ; high above, was spread 
The emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind, 
Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead 
A shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed. 



And round about sloped many a lawny mountain 
With incense-bearing forests, and vast caves 
Of marble radiance to that mighty fountain ; 
And where the flood its own bright margin laves, 
Their echoes talk with its eternal waves, 
Which, from the depths whose jagged caverns 
Their unreposing strife, it lifts and heaves, [breed 
Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed 
A river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy 
speed. 

XX. 

As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder, 
A boat approached, borne by the musical air 
Along the waves, which sung and sparkled 

under 
Its rapid keel — a winged shape sate there, 
A child with silver-shining wings, so fair, 
That as her bark did through the waters glide, 
The shadow of the lingering waves did wear 
Light, as from starry beams ; from side to side, 
While veering to the wind, her plumes the bark 
did guide. 

XXI. 

The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl, 
Almost translucent with the light divine 
Of her within ; the prow and stern did curl, 
Horned on high, like the young moon supine, 
When, o'er dim twilight mountains dark with pine, 
It floats upon the sunset's sea of beams, 
Whose golden waves in many a purple line 
Fade fast, till, borne on sunlight's ebbing streams, 
Dilating, on earth's verge the sunken meteor 
gleams. 

XXII. 

Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet ;— 
Then Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes 
Which swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet 
Than happy love, a wild and glad surprise, 
Glanced as she spake : " Aye, this is Paradise 
And not a dream, and we are all united ! 
Lo, that is mine own child, who, in the guise 
Of madness, came like day to one benighted 
In lonesome woods : my heart is now too well 
requited !" 



94 



THE ItEVOLT OF ISLAM. 



And than she wept aloud, and in her arms 
Clasped that bright Shape, less marvellously fair 
Than her own human hues and living charms ; 
Which, aa she leaned in passion's silence there, 
Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air, 
Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight ; 
The glossy darkness of her streaming hair 
Fell o'er that snowy child, and wrapt from sight 
The fond and long emhraec which did their hearts 
unite. 

XXIV. 

Then the bright child, the plumed Seraph, came, 
And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine, 
And said, " I was disturbed by tremulous shame 
When once we met, yet knew that I was thine 
From the same hour in which thy lips divine 
Kindled a clinging dream within my brain, 
Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine 
Thine image with her memory dear— again 
We meet ; exempted now from mortal fear or pain. 



"When the consuming flames had wrapt ye round, 
The hope which I had cherished went away ; 
1 fell in agony on the senseless ground, 
And hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray 
My mind was gone, when blight, like dawning day, 
The Spectre of the Plague before me flew, 
And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say, 
* They wait for thee, beloved !' — then I knew 
The death-mark on my breast, and became calm 
anew. 

XXVI. 

" It was the calm of love — for I was dying. 
I saw the black and half-extinguished pyre 
In its own grey and shrunken ashes lying ; 
The pitchy smoke of the departed fire 
Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire 
Above the towers, like night ; beneath whose shade, 
Awed by the ending of their own desire, 
The armies stood ; a vacancy was made 
In expectation's depth, and so they stood dismayed. 



u The frightful silence of that altered mood, 
The tortures of the dying clove alone, 
Till one uprose among the multitude, 
And said — ' The flood of time is rolling on, 
We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone 
To glide in peace down death's mysterious 

stream. 
Have ye done well ? They moulder flesh and bone, 
Who might have made this life's envenomed dream 
A sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem. 



" ' These perish as the good and great of yore 
Have perished, and their murderers will repent. 
Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before 
Yon smoke has faded from the firmament 
Even for this cause, that ye, who must lament 
The death of those that made this world so fair, 
Cannot recall them now ; but then is lent 
To man the wisdom of a high despair, 
When such can die, and he live on and linger here. 



" ' Aye, ye may fear not now the Pestilence, 
From fabled hell as by a charm withdrawn ; 
All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence 
In pain and fire have unbelievers gone ; 
And ye must sadly turn away, and moan 
In secret, to his home each one returning ; 
And to long ages shall this hour be known ; 
And slowly shall its memory, ever burning, 
Fill this dark night of things with an eternal 
morning. 

XXX. 

" ' For me the world is grown too void and cold, 
Since hope pursues immortal destiny 
With steps thus slow — therefore shall ye behold 
How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die ; 
Tell to your children this !' then suddenly 
He sheathed a dagger in his heart, and fell ; 
My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me 
There came a murmur from the crowd to tell 
Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell. 



" Then suddenly I stood a winged Thought 
Before the immortal Senate, and the seat 
Of that star-shining spirit, whence is wrought 
The strength of its dominion, good and great, 
The better Genius of this world's estate. 
His realm around one mighty Fane is spread, 
Elysian islands bright and fortunate, 
Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead, 
Where I am sent to lead !" These winged words 
she said, 

xxxi r. 
And with the silence of her eloquent smile, 
Bade us embark in her divine canoe ; 
Then at the helm we took our seat, the while 
Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue 
Into the winds' invisible stream she threw, 
Sitting beside the prow : like gossamer, 
On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew 
O'er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair, 
Whose shores receded fast, while we seemed 
lingering there ; 

XXXIII. 

Till down that mighty stream dark, calm, and fleet, 
Between a chasm of cedar mountains riven, 
Chased by the thronging winds, whose viewless feet 
As swift as twinkling beams, had, under Heaven, 
From woods and waves wild sounds and odours 

driven, 
The boat flew visibly — three nights and days, 
Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and 
We sailed along the winding watery ways [even, 
Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze. 



A scene of joy and wonder to behold 
That river's shapes and shadows changing ever, 
Where the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold 
Its whirlpools, where all hues did spread and quiver, 
And where melodious falls did burst and shiver 
Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray 
Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river, 
Or when the moonlight poured a holier day, 
One vast and glittering lake around green islands 
lay. 



THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



95 



Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran 
The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud 
Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man, 
Which flieth forth and cannot make abode ; 
Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we 

glode, 
Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned 
With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud, 
The homes of the departed, dimly frowned 
O'er the bright waves which girt their dark foun- 
dations round. 



Sometimes between the wide and flowering mea- 
dows, 
Mile after mile we sailed, and 'twas delight 
To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows 
Over the grass ; sometimes beneath the night 
Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright 
With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep 
And dark green chasms, shades beautiful andwhite, 
Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep 
Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves 
of sleep. 

XXXVII. 

And ever as we sailed, our minds were full 
Of love and wisdom, which would overflow 
In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful ; 
And in quick smiles whose light would come and 
Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow [go, 
Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress — 
For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know, 
That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less 
Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness. 



Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and 

feeling 
Number delightful hours — for through the sky 
The sphered lamps of day and night, revealing 
New changes and new glories, rolled on high, 



Sun, Moon, and moonlike lamps, the progeny 
Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair : 
On the fourth day, wild as a wind- wrought sea, 
The stream became, and fast and faster bare 
The spirit-winged boat, steadily speeding there. 



Steadily and swift, where the waves rolled like 

mountains 
Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour 
Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand foun- 
The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar [tains, 
Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore, 
Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child 
Securely fled, that rapid stress before, 
Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild, 
Wreathed in the silver mist : in joy and pride we 

smiled. 



The torrent of that wide and raging river 
Is passed, and our aerial speed suspended. 
We look behind ; a golden mist did quiver 
When its wild surges with the lake were blended : 
Our bark hung there, as one line suspended 
Between two heavens, that windless wavelesslake ; 
Which four great cataracts from four vales, 

attended 
By mists, aye feed, from rocks and clouds they 
And of that azure sea a silent refuge make, [break, 



Motionless resting on the lake awhile, 
I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear 
Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle, 
And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere 
Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear 
The Temple of the Spirit ; on the sound 
Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near, 
Like the swift moon this glorious earth around, 
The charmed boat approached, and there its haven 
found. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



BY THE EDITOR. 



Shelley possessed two remarkable qualities of 
intellect — a brilliant imagination and a logical 
exactness of reason. His inclinations led him 
(he fancied) almost alike to poetry and meta- 
physical discussions. I say " he fancied," because 
I believe the former to have been paramount, 
and that it would have gained the mastery even 
had he struggled against it. However, he said 
that he deliberated at one time whether he should 
dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics, and 
resolving on the former, he educated himself for 
it, discarding in a great measure his philosophical 
pursuits, and engaging himself in the study of the 
poets of Greece, Italy, and England. To these 
may be added a constant perusal of portions of 
the Old Testament — the Psalms, the book of Job, 
the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime 
poetry of which filled him with delight. 

As a poet, his intellect and compositions were 
powerfully influenced by exterior circumstances, 
and especially by his place of abode. He was 
very fond of travelling, and ill health increased 
this restlessness. The sufferings occasioned by a 
cold English winter, made him pine, especially when 
our colder sprhig arrived, for a more genial climate. 
In 1816 he again visited Switzerland, and rented 
a house on the banks of the lake of Geneva ; and 
many a day, in cloud or sunshine, was passed alone 
in his boat — sailing as the wind listed, or weltering 
on the calm waters. The majestic aspect of nature 
ministered such thoughts as he afterwards enwove 
in verse. His lines on the Bridge of the Arve, 
and his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, were written 
at this time. Perhaps during this summer his 
genius was checked by association with another 
poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his 
own, yet who, in the poem he wrote at that time, 
gave tokens that he shared for a period the more 
abstract and etherialised inspiration of Shelley. 
The saddest events awaited his return to England ; 
but such was his fear to wound the feelings of 
others, that he never expressed the anguish he felt, 
and seldom gave vent to the indignation roused by 
the persecutions he underwent ; while the course 
of deep unexpressed passion, and the sense of in- 
jury, engendered the desire to embody themselves 
in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil 
which cling to real life. 



He chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished 
in dreams of liberty, some of whose actions are in 
direct opposition to the opinions of the world ; but 
who is animated throughout by an ardent love of 
virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of 
political and intellectual freedom on his fellow- 
creatures. He created for this youth a woman 
such as he delighted to imagine — full of enthusiasm 
for the same objects ; and they both, with will un- 
vanquished and the deepest sense of the justice of 
their cause, met adversity and death. There exists 
in this poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. 
The character of the old man who liberates Laon 
from his tower-prison, and tends on him in sick- 
ness, is founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when 
Shelley was at Eton, had often stood by to befriend 
and support him, and whose name he never men- 
tioned without love and veneration. 

During the year 1817, we were established at 
Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. Shelley's choice of 
abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no 
great distance from London, and its neighbourhood 
to the Thames. The poem was written in his boat, 
as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or 
during wanderings in the neighbouring country, 
which is distinguished for peculiar beauty. The 
chalk hills break into cliffs that overhang the 
Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech ; the 
wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful 
by exuberant vegetation ; and the cultivated part 
is peculiarly fertile. With all this wealth of nature 
which, either in the form of gentlemen's parks or 
soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, 
Marlow was inhabited (I hope it is altered now) 
by a very poor population. The women are lace- 
makers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, 
for which they were very ill paid. The poor-laws 
ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those 
who had risen just above that state, and were 
obliged to pay poor-rates. The changes produced 
by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, 
brought with them the most heart-rending evils 
to the poor. Shelley afforded what alleviation he 
could. In the winter, while bringing out his poem, 
he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while 
visiting the poor cottages. I mention these things, 
— for this minute and active sympathy with his 
fellow-creatures gives a thousand-fold interest to 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



97 



his speculations, and stamps with reality his plead- 
ings for the human race. 

The poem, bold in its opinions and uncompro- 
mising in their expression, met with many censurers, 
not only among those who allow of no virtue but 
such as supports the cause they espouse, but even 
among those whose opinions were similar to his 
own. I extract a portion of a letter written in 
answer to one of these friends ; it best details the 
impulses of Shelley's mind and his motives : it was 
written with entire unreserve ; and is therefore a 
precious monument of his own opinion of his 
powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour 
with which he clung, in adversity and through the 
valley of the shadow of death, to views from which 
he believed the permanent happiness of mankind 
must eventually spring. 

"Marlow,Dec. 11,1817. 
" I have read and considered all that you say 
about my general powers, and the particular instance 
of the Poem in which I have attempted to develop 
them. Nothing can be more satisfactory to me 
than the interest which your admonitions express. 
But I think you are mistaken in some points with 
regard to the peculiar nature of my powers, what- 
ever be their amount. I listened with deference 
and self-suspicion to your censures of ' the Revolt 
of Islam ; ' but the productions of mine which you 
commend hold a very low place in my own esteem ; 
and this reassured me, in some degree at least. 
The poem was produced by a series of thoughts 
which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained 
enthusiasm. I felt the precariousness of my life, 
and I engaged in this task, resolved to leave some 
record of myself. Much of what the volume con- 
tains was written with the same feeling, as real, 
though not so prophetic, as the communications of 
a dying man. I never presumed indeed to con- 
sider it anything approaching to faultless ; but 



when I consider contemporary productions of the 
same apparent pretensions, I own I was filled with 
confidence. I felt that it was in many respects a 
genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the 
sentiments were true, not assumed. And in this 
have I long believed that my power consists ; in 
sympathy and that part of the imagination which 
relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am 
formed, if for anything not in common with the 
herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote 
distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external 
nature or the living beings which surround us, 
and to communicate the conceptions which result 
from considering either the moral or the material 
universe as a whole. Of course, I believe these 
faculties, which perhaps comprehend all that is 
sublime in man, to exist very imperfectly in my 
own mind. But when you advert to my chancery 
paper, a cold, forced, unimpassioned, insignificant 
piece of cramped and cautious argument ; and to 
the little scrap about Mandeville, which expressed 
my feelings indeed, but cost scarcely two minutes' 
thought to express, as specimens of my powers, 
more favourable than that which grew as it were 
from * the agony and bloody sweat' of intellectual 
travail ; surely I must feel that in some manner, 
either I am mistaken in believing that I have 
any talent at all, or you in the selection of the 
specimens of it. 

" Yet after all, I cannot but be conscious in 
much of what I write, of an absence of that tran- 
quillity which is the attribute and accompaniment 
of power. This feeling alone would make your 
most kind and wise admonitions, on the subject of 
the economy of intellectual force, valuable to me. 
And if I live, or if I see any trust in coming years, 
doubt not but that I shall do something, whatever it 
may be, which a serious and earnest estimate of 
my powers will suggest to me, and which will be 
in every respect accommodated to their utmost 
limits." 



END OF THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 

8 Emical 2@rama. 



IN FOUR ACTS. 



Audisne hffic Amphiarae, sub terram abdite 



PREFACE. 

The Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their sub- 
ject any portion of their national history or mythology, 
employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary 
discretion. They by no means conceived themselves 
bound to adhere to the common interpretation, or to 
imitate in story, as in title, their rivals and prede- 
cessors. Such a system would have amounted to a 
resignation of those claims to preference over their 
competitors which incited the composition. The 
Agamemnonian story was exhibited on the Athenian 
theatre with as many variations as dramas. 

I have presumed to employ a similar license. The 
"Prometheus Unbound" of iEschylus supposed the 
reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of 
the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire 
by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. 
Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given 
in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, by the permis- 
sion of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. 
Had I framed my story on this model, I should have 
done no more than have attempted to restore the lost 
drama of iEschylus; an ambition, which, if my pre- 
ference to this mode of treating the subject had incited 
me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison 
such an attempt would challenge might well abate. 
But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble 
as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor 
of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which 
is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endur- 
ance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could 
conceive of him as unsaying his high language and 
quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. 
The only imaginary being resembling in any degree 
Prometheus, is Satan : and Prometheus is, in my judg- 
ment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, 
in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and 
patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible 
of being described as exempt from the taints of ambi- 
tion, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggran- 
disement, which, in the Hero of Paradise Lost, interfere 
with the interest. The character of Satan engenders 
in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to 
weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the 
former because the latter exceed all measure. In the 
minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction 
with a religious feeling, it engenders something worse. 
But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest 
perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled 



by the purest and the truest motives to the best and 
noblest ends. 

This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous 
ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery 
glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, 
which are extended in ever-winding labyrinths upon 
its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in 
the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect 
of the vigorous awakening of spring in that divinest 
climate, and the new life with which it drenches the 
spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of 
this drama. 

The imagery which I have employed will be found, 
in many instances, to have been drawn from the opera- 
tions of the human mind, or from those external actions 
by which they are expressed. This is unusual in modern 
poetry, although Dante and Shakspeare are full of 
instances of the same kind : Dante indeed more than 
any other poet, and with greater success. But the 
Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of awaken- 
ing the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, 
were in the habitual use of this power ; and it is the 
study of their works (since a higher merit would pro- 
bably be denied me), to which I am willing that my 
readers should impute this singularity. 

One word is due in candour to the degree in which 
the study of contemporary writings may have tinged 
my composition, for such has been a topic of censure 
with regard to poems far more popular, and, indeed, 
more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible 
that any one who inhabits the same age with such 
writers as those who stand in the foremost ranks of our 
own, can conscientiously assure himself that his language 
and tone of thought may not have been modified by 
the study of the productions of those extraordinary 
intellects. It is true, that, not the spirit of their 
genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself, 
are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds 
than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual 
condition of the minds among which they have been 
produced. Thus a number of writers possess the 
form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it is 
alleged, they imitate ; because the former is the endow- 
ment of the age in which they live, and the latter 
must be the uncommunicated lightning of their own 
mind. 

The peculiar style of intense and comprehensive 
imagery which distinguishes the modern literature ot 
England, has not been, as a general power, the product 
of the imitation of any particular writer. The mass of 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



99 



capabilities remains at every period materially the same; 
the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually 
change. If England were divided into forty republics, 
each equal in population and extent to Athens, there 
is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not 
more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce 
philosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except 
Shakspeare) have never been surpassed. We owe the 
great writers of the golden age of our literature to that 
fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to 
dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian 
religion. We owe Milton to the progress and develop- 
ment of the same spirit : the sacred Milton was, let it 
ever be remembered, a republican, and a bold inquirer 
into morals and religion. The great writers of our 
own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions 
and forerunners of some unimagined change in our 
social condition, or the opinions which cement it. The 
cloud of mind is discharging ics collected lightning, and 
the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is 
now restoring, or is about to be restored. 

As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, 
but it creates by combination and representation. 
Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not 
because the portions of which they are composed had 
no previous existence in the mind of man, or in nature, 
but because the whole produced by their combination 
has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those 
sources of emotion and thought, and with the contem- 
porary condition of them : one great poet is a master- 
piece of nature, which another not only ought to study 
but must study. He might as wisely and as easily 
determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror 
of all that is lovely in the visible universe, as exclude 
from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in 
the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence 
of doing it would be a presumption in any but the 
greatest ; the effect, even in him, would be strained, 
unnatural, and ineffectual. A poet is the combined 
product of such internal powers as modify the nature 
of others ; and of such external influences as excite 
and sustain these powers ; he is not one, but both. 
Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all 
the objects of nature and art ; by every word and every 
suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his con- 
sciousness ; it is the mirror upon which all forms are 
reflected, and in which they compose one form. Poets, 
not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, 
and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in 



another, the creations, of their age. From this sub- 
jection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity 
between Homer and Hcsiod, between iEschylus and 
Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante 
and Petrarch, between Shakspcare and Fletcher, 
between Dryden and Pope ; each has a generic resem- 
blance under which their specific distinctions are 
arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, 
I am willing to confess that I have imitated. 

Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknow- 
ledging that I have, what a Scotch philosopher charac- 
teristically terms, ' ' a passion for reforming the world : " 
what passion incited him to write and publish his book, 
he omits to explain. For my part, I had rather be 
damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than go to heaven 
with Paley and Malthus. But it is a mistake to sup- 
pose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to 
the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider 
them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on 
the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhor- 
rence ; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose 
that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My 
purpose has< hitherto been simply to familiarise the 
highly refined imagination of the more select classes 
of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral 
excellence ; aware that until the mind can love, and 
admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned 
principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the 
highway of life, which the unconscious passenger tram- 
ples into dust, although they would bear the harvest 
of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I 
purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what 
appear to me to be the genuine elements of human 
society, let not the advocates of injustice and supersti- 
tion flatter themselves that I should take iEschylus 
rather than Plato as my model. 

The having spoken of myself with unaffected free- 
dom will need little apology with the candid ; and let 
the uncandid consider that they injure me less than 
their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation. 
Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and 
instruct others, be they ever so inconsiderable, he is 
yet bound to exert them : if his attempt be ineffectual, 
let the punishment of an unaccomplished purpose have 
been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap 
the dust of oblivion upon his efforts ; the pile they 
raise will betray his grave, which might otherwise have 
been unknown. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 



Prometheus. 
Demogorgon . 
Jupiter. 
The Earth. 
Ocean. 
Apollo. 
Mercury. 
Hercules. 



Asia, \ 

Panthea, v. Ocem 

Ione, 

The Phantasm of Jupiter. 
The Spirit of the Earth. 
The Spirit of the Moon. 
Spirits of the Hours. 
Spirits. Echoes. Fauns. 
Furies. 



100 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



ACT I. 



■ Ravine of Tcy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. 
rno.MKTHKrs it discovered bound to the Precipice. Pan- 
thka and Ione art seated at his feet. Time, Night. 
Durino the Scene, Morning slowlu breaks. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Monarch of Gods and Daemons, and all Spirits 
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds 
Which Thou and I alone of living things 
Behold with sleepless eyes ! regard this Earth 
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou 
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, 
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, 
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope. 
Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate, 
Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, 
O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge. 
Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, 
And moments aye divided by keen pangs 
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, 
Scorn and despair, — these are mine empire. 
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest 
From thine unenvied throne, 0, Mighty God ! 
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame 
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here 
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, 
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured ; without herb, 
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. 
Ah me, alas ! pain, pain ever, for ever ! 

No change, no pause, no hope ! Yet I endure. 
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt ? 
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, 
Has it not seen ? The Sea, in storm or calm, 
Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below, 
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony 1 
Ah me ! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever ! 

The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears 
Of their moon-freezing crystals ; the bright chains 
Eat with their burning cold into my bones. 
Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips 
His beak in poison not his own, tears up 
My heart ; and shapeless sights come wandering by, 
The ghastly people of the realm of dream, 
Mocking me : and the Earthquake-fiends are charged 
To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds 
When the rocks split and close again behind : 
While from their loud abysses howling throng 
The genii of the storm, urging the rage 
Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail. 
And yet to me welcome is day and night, 
Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn, 
Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs 
The leaden-coloured east ; for then they lead 
The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom 
— As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim — 
Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood 
From these pale feet, which then might trample thee 
If they disdained not such a prostrate slave. 
Disdain ! Ah no ! I pity thee. What ruin 
Will hunt thee undefended through the wide 

Heaven ! 
How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror, 
Gape like a hell within ! I speak in grief, 



Not exultation, for I hate no more, 

As then ere misery made me wise. The curse 

Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye 

Mountains, 
Whose many-voiced Echoes, through the mist 
Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell ! 
Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost, 
Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept 
Shuddering through India ! Thou serenest Air, 
Through which the Sun walks burning without 

beams ! 
And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised wings 
Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss, 
As thunder, louder than your own, made rock 
The orbed world ! If then my words had power, 
Though I am changed so that aught evil wish 
Is dead within ; although no memory be 
Of what is hate, let them not lose it now ! 
What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak. 

first voice : [from the mountains.) 
Thrice three hundred thousand years 

O'er the Earthquake's couch we stood : 
Oft, as men convulsed with fears, 

We trembled in our multitude. 

second voice : (from the springs.) 
Thunderbolts had parched our water, 

We had been stained with bitter blood, 
And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter, 

Through a city and a solitude. 

third voice : (from the air.) 
I had clothed, since Earth uprose, 

Its wastes in colours not their own ; 
And oft had my serene repose 

Been cloven by many a rending groan. 

fourth voice : (from the whirlwinds.) 
We had soared beneath these mountains 

Unresting ages ; nor had thunder, 
Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains, 
Nor any power above or under 
Ever made us mute with wonder. 



first voice. 
But never bowed our snowy crest 
As at the voice of thine unrest. 



SECOND VOICE. 

Never such a sound before 
To the Indian waves we bore. 
A pilot asleep on the howling sea 
Leaped up from the deck in agony, 
And heard, and cried, " Ah, woe is me !" 
And died as mad as the wild waves be. 

THIRD voice. 
By such dread words from Earth to Heaven 
My still realm was never riven : 
When its wound was closed, there stood 
Darkness o'er the day like blood. 



PROMKTIIKl'W UNBOUND. 



101 



FOURTH VOICE. 

And we shrank back : for dreams of ruin 
To frozen caves our flight pursuing 
Made us keep silence — thus — and thus — 
Though silence is as hell to us. 

THE EARTH. 

The tongueless Caverns of the craggy hills 
Cried, " Misery !" then ; the hollow Heaven replied, 
" Misery !" And the Ocean's purple waves, 
Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds, 
And the pale nations heard it, " Misery !" 

PROMETHEUS. 

I hear a sound of voices : not the voice 
Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou 
Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will 
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove, 
Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist 
Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me, 
The Titan ? He who made his agony 
The barrier to your else all-conquering foe ? 
Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams, 
Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below, 
Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered 
With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes ; [once 
Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, now 
To commune with me ? me alone, who checked, 
As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer, 
The falsehood and the force of him who reigns 
Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves 
Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses : 
Why answer ye not, still ? Brethren ! 

THE EARTH. 

They dare not. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Who dares I for I would hear that curse again. 

Ha ! what an awful whisper rises up ! 

'Tis scarce like sound : it tingles through the frame 

As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike. 

Speak, Spirit ! from thine inorganic voice 

I only know that thou art moving near 

And love. How cursed I him ? 

THE EARTH. 

How canst thou hear, 
Who knowest not the language of the dead ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

Thou art a living spirit ; speak as they. 

THE EARTH. 

I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King- 
Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain 
More torturing than the one whereon I roll. 
Subtle thou art and good ; and though the Gods 
Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God 
Being wise and kind : earnestly hearken now. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim, 
Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel 
Faint, like one mingled in entwining love ; 
Yet 'tis not pleasure. 

THE EARTH. 

No, thou canst not hear : 
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 
Only to those who die. 



melancholy Voic 



PROM ETHELS. 

And what art thou, 

THE EARTH. 



I am the Earth, 
Thy mother ; she within whose stony veins, 
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree 
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen ail*, 
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame, 
When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud 
Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy ! 
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted 
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust, 
And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread 
Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here. 
Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll 
Around us : their inhabitants beheld 
My sphered light wane in wide Heaven ; the sea 
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire 
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow 
Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown ; 
Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains ; 
Blue thistles bloomed in cities ; foodless toads 
Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled ; 
When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and 

worm, 
And Famine ; and black blight on herb and tree ; 
And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass, 
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds 
Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry 
With grief ; and the thin air, my breath, was stained 
With the contagion of a mother's hate 
Breathed on her child's destroyer ; aye, I heard 
Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not, 
Yet my innumerable seas and streams, 
Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air, 
And the inarticulate people of the dead, 
Preserve, atreasured spell. We meditate 
In secret joy and hope those dreadful words 
But dare not speak them. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Venerable mother ! 
All else who live and suffer take from thee 
Some comfort ; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds, 
And love, though fleeting ; these may not be mine. 
But mine own words, I pray, deny me not. 

THE EARTH. 

They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust, 
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, 
Met his own image walking in the garden. 
That apparition, sole of men, he saw. 
For know there are two worlds of life and death : 
One that which thou beholdest ; but the other 
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit 
The shadows of all forms that think and live 
Till death unite them and they part no more ; 
Dreams and the light imaginings of men, 
And all that faith creates or love desires, 
Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes. 
There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade, 
'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains ; all the gods 
Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds, 
Vast, sceptred phantoms ; heroes, men, and beasts ; 
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom ; 
And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne 
Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter 



102 



PROMKTHKUS UNBOUND. 



The curse whiofa all remember. Call at will 

Thine own ghost, or the ghost of .Jupiter, 
Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods 
From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin 
Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons. 
Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge 

Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades, 

As rainy wind through the abandoned gate 

Of a fallen palace. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Mother, let not aught 
Of that which may he evil, pass again 
My lips, or those of aught resembling me. 
Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear ! 

IONE. 

My wings are folded o'er mine ears : 

My wings are crossed o'er mine eyes : 
Yet through their silver shade appears, 

And through their lulling plumes arise, 
A Shape, a throng of sounds ; 

May it be no ill to thee 
thou of many wounds ! 
Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake, 
Ever thus we watch and wake. 

PANTHEA. 

The sound is of whirlwind underground, 

Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cioven ; 
The shape is awful like the sound, 

Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven. 
A sceptre of pale gold 

To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud 
His veined hand doth hold. 
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong, 
Like one who does, not suffers wrong. 

PHANTASM OF JUPITER. 

Why have the secret powers of this strange world 
Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither 
On direst storms ? What unaccustomed sounds 
Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice 
With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk 
In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou? 

PROMETHEUS. 

Tremendous Image ! as thou art must be 
He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe, 
The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear, 
Although no thought inform thine empty voice. 

THE EARTH. 

Listen ! And though your echoes must be mute, 
Grey mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs, 
Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams, 
Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak. 

PHANTASM. 

A spirit seizes me and speaks within : 
It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud. 

PANTHEA. 

See, how he lifts his mighty looks, the Heaven 
Darkens above. 

IONE. 

He speaks ! shelter me ! 

PROMETHEUS. 

I see the curse on gestures proud and cold, 
And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate, 
And such despair as mocks itself with smiles, 
Written as on a scroll : yet SDeak : Oh, speak ! 



PHANTASM. 

Fiend, I defy thee ! with a calm, fixed mind, 
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do ; 

Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Human-kind, 
One only being shalt thou not subdue. 

Rain then thy plagues upon me here, 

Ghastly disease and frenzying fear; 

And let alternate frost and fire 

Eat into me, and be thine ire 
Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms 
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms. 

Ay, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent. 
O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power, 

And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent 
To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower 

Let thy malignant spirit move 

In darkness over those I love : 

On me and mine I imprecate 

The utmost torture of thy hate ; 
And thus devote to sleepless agony, 
This undeclining head while thou must reign on high. 

But thou, who art the God and Lord : 0, thou 
Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe, 

To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow 
In fear and worship : all-prevailing foe ! 

I curse thee ! let a sufferer's curse 

Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse ! 

Till thine Infinity shall be 

A robe of envenomed agony ; 
And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain, 
To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain. 

Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this curse, 

111 deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good; 
Both infinite as is the universe, 

And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude. 
An awful image of calm power 
Though now thou sittest, let the hour 
Come, when thou must appear to be 
That which thou art internally. 
And after many a false and fruitless crime, 
Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space 
and time. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Were these my words, Parent ? 

THE EARTH. 

They were thine. 

PROMETHEUS. 

It doth repent me : words are quick and vain; 
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine." 
I wish no living thing to suffer pain. 

THE EARTH. 

Misery, Oh misery to me, 
That Jove at length should vanquish thee. 
Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea, 
The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye. 
Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead, 
Your refuge, your defence lies fallen and van- 
quished. 

FIRST ECHO. 

Lies fallen and vanquished ? 

SECOND ECHO. 

Fallen and vanquished ! 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



Ur\ 



IONE. 

Fear not : 'tis but some passing spasm, 

The Titan is unvanquished stili. 
But see, where through the azure chasm 

Of yon forked and snowy hill 
Trampling the slant winds on high 

With golden-sandalled feet, that glow 
Under plumes of purple dye, 
Like rose-ensanguined ivory, 

A Shape comes now, 
Stretching ou high from his right hand 
A serpent-cinctured wand. 

PANTHEA. 

'Tis Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury. 

IONE. 

And who are those with hydra tresses 
And iron wings that climb the wind, 

Whom the frowning God represses 
Like vapours steaming up behind, 

Clanging loud, an endless crowd — 

PANTHEA. 

These are Jove's tempest- walking hounds, 
Whom he gluts with groans and blood, 
When charioted on sulphurous cloud 

He bursts Heaven's bounds. 

IONE. 

Are they now led, from the thin dead 
On new pangs to be fed ? 

PANTHEA. 

The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud. 



FIRST FURY. 



Ha ! I scent life ! 



SECOND FURY. 

Let me but look into his eyes ! 

THIRD FURY. 

The hope of torturing him smells like a heap 
Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle. 

FIRST FURY. 

Darest thou delay, Herald ! take cheer, Hounds 
Of Hell : what if the Son of Maia soon 
Should make us food and sport — who can please long 
The Omnipotent ? 

MERCURY. 

Back to your towers of iron, 
And gnash beside the streams of fire, and wail 
Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise ! and Gorgon, 
Chimsera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends, 
Who ntinisteredto Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine, 
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate : 
These shall perform your task. 

FIRST FURY. 

Oh, mercy ! mercy ! 
We die with our desire : drive us not back ! 

MERCURY. 

Crouch then in silence. 

Awful Sufferer ; 
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly 
I come, by the Great Father's will driven down, 
To execute a doom of new revenge. 
Alas ! I pity thee, and hate myself 
That I can do no more ; aye from thy sight 
Returning, for a season, heaven seems hell, 



So thy worn form pursues me night and day, 
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good, 
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife 
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps 
That measure and divide the weary years 
From which there is no refuge, long have taught, 
And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer 

arms 
With the strange might of unimagined pains 
The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell, 
And my commission is to leud them here, 
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends 
People the abyss, and leave them to their task. 
Be it not so ! there is a secret known 
To thee, and to none else of living things, 
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven, 
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme ; 
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne 
In intercession ; bend thy soul in prayer, 
And like a suppliant in some gorgeous faue, 
Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart : 
For benefits and meek submission tame 
The fiercest and the mightiest. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Evil minds 
Change good to their own nature. I gave all 
He has ; and in return he chains me here 
Years, ages, night and day ; whether the Sun 
Split my parched skin, or in the moony night 
The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair : 
Whilst my beloved race is trampled down 
By his thought-executing ministers. 
Such is the tyrant's recompense : 'tis just : 
He who is evil can receive no good ; 
And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost, 
He can feel hate, fear, shame ; not gratitude : 
He but requites me for his own misdeed. 
Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks 
With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge. 
Submission, thou dost know I cannot try ; 
For what submission but that fatal word, 
The death-seal of mankind's captivity, 
Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword, 
Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept, 
Or could I yield ? Which yet I will not yield. 
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned 
In brief Omnipotence ; secure are they : 
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down 
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs, 
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait, 
Enduring thus, the retributive hour 
Which since we spake is even nearer now. 
But hark, the hell-hounds clamour. Fear delay ! 
Behold ! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown. 

MERCURY. 

Oh, that we might be spared : I to inflict, 
And thou to suffer ! once more answer me : 
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

I know but this, that it must come. 



Alas ! 
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

They last while Jove must reign; nor more, nor less 
Do I desire or fear. 



HU 



PROMETHEUS UNBorM). 



MXBCUET, 

\ Yt pause, and plunge 
Into Eternity, where recorded time, 

Even all that wo imagine, age on age, 

Sooms luu a point, ami tho reluctant mind 

Plage, wearily in its unending flight 
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless; 
Perohanee it has not numbered tho slow years 
Whicb thou must spend in torture, unreprieved? 

PBOMSTHBUB. 

Perehanee no thougfatcanoount them, yet they pass. 

MERCURY. 

If thou might's! dwell among the Gods the while, 
Lapped in voluptuous joy ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

I would not quit 
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains. 

MERCURY. 

Alas ! I wonder at, yet pity thee. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, 
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, 
As light in the sun, throned : how vain is talk ! 
Call up the fiends. 

IONE. 

0, sister, look ! White fire 
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar; 
How fearfully God's thunder howls behind ! 

MERCURY. 

I must obey his words and thine : alas ! 
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart ! 

PANTHEA. 

See where the child of Heaven, with winged feet, 
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn. 

IONE. 

Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes 
Lest thou behold and die : they come : they come 
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings, 
And hollow underneath, like death. 



FIRST FURY. 



SECOND FURY. 



Prometheus ! 



Immortal Titan 



THIRD FURY. 

Champion of Heaven's slaves ! 



PROMETHEUS. 

He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here, 
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms, 
What and who are ye ? Never yet there came 
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell 
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove ; 
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes, 
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate, 
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy. 

FIRST FURY. 

We are the ministers of pain and fear, 
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate, 
And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue [fawn, 
Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing 
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live, 
When the great King betrays them to our will. 



PROMETHEUS. 

Oh ! many fearful natures in one name, 
I know ye ; and these lakes and echoes know 
The darkness and the clangour of your wings. 
But why more hideous than your loathed selves 
Gather ye up in legions from the deep ? 

SECOND FURY. 

We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice, rejoice ! 

PROMETHEUS. 

Can aught exult in its deformity ? 

SECOND FURY. 

The beauty of delight makes lovers glad, 

Gazing on one another : so are we. 

As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels 

To gather for her festal crown of flowers 

The aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek, 

So from our victim's destined agony 

The shade which is our form invests us round, 

Else we are shapeless as our mother Night. 

PROMETHEUS. 

I laugh your power, and his who sent you here, 
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain. 

FIRST FURY. 

Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone, 
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within ! 

PROMETHEUS. 

Pain is my element, as hate is thine ; 
Ye rend me now : I care not. 

SECOND FURY. 

Dost imagine 
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, 
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called 
You, or aught else so wretched, into light. 

THIRD FURY. 

Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one, 
Like animal life, and though we can obscure not 
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell 
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude 
Vexing the self-content of wisest men : 
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain, 
And foul desire round thine astonished heart, 
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins 
Crawling like agony. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Why, ye are thus now ; 
Yet am I king over myself, and rule 
The torturing and conflicting throngs within, 
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous. 

CHORUS OF FURIES. 

From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the 

earth, 
Where the night has its grave and the morning its 

birth, 

Come, come, come ! 
Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth, 
When cities sink howling in ruin ; and ye 
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea, 
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track, 
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck ; 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



lo; 



Come, come, come ! 
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red, 
Strewed beneath a nation dead ; 
Leave the hatred, as in ashes 

Fire is left for future burning : 
It will burst in bloodier flashes 

When ye stir it, soon returning : 
Leave the self-contempt implanted 
In young spirits, sense enchanted, 

Misery's yet unkindled fuel : 
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted 

To the maniac dreamer : cruel 
More than ye can be with hate 

Is he with fear. 

Come, come, come ! 
We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate, 
And we burthen the blasts of the atmosphere, 
But vainly we toil till ye come here. 

IONE. 

Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings. 

PANTHEA. 

These solid mountains quiver with the sound 
Even as the tremulous air : their shadows make 
The space within my plumes more black than night. 

FIRST FURY. 

Your call was as a winged car, 
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far ; 
It rapt us from red gulfs of war. 

SECOND FURY. 

From wide cities, famine-wasted ; 

THIRD FURY. 

Groans half heard, and blood untasted ; 

FOURTH FURY. 

Kingly conclaves, stern and cold, 

Where blood with gold is bought and sold ; 

FIFTH FURY. 

From the furnace, white and hot, 
In which — 

A FURY. 

Speak not ; whisper not : 
I know all that ye would tell, 
But to speak might break the spell 
Which must bend the Invincible, 

The stern of thought ; 
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell. 



Tear the veil ! 



ANOTHER FURY. 

It is torn. 



CHORUS. 

The pale stars of the morn 
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne. 
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan ! We laugh thee to 

scorn. 
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst 

for man ! 
Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran 
Those perishing waters ; a thirst of fierce fever, 
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for 
ever. 

One came forth of gentle worth, 
Smiling on the sanguine earth : 



His words outlived him, like swift poison 

Withering up truth, peace, and pity. 
Look ! where round the wide horizon 

Many a million-peopled city 
Vomits smoke in the bright air. 
Mark that outcry of despair ! 
'Tis his mild and gentle ghost 

Wailing for the faith he kindled : 
Look again ! the flames almost 

To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled : 
The survivors round the embers 
Gather in dread. 

J ov> joy, joy ! 
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers ; 
And the future is dark, and the present is spread 
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Drops of bloody agony flow 

From his white and quivering brow. 

Grant a little respite now : 

See a disenchanted nation 

Springs like day from desolation ; 

To truth its state is dedicate, 

And Freedom leads it forth, her mate ; 

A legioned band of linked brothers, 

Whom Love calls children — 

SEMICHORUS II. 

'Tis another's. 
See how kindred murder kin ! 
'Tis the vintage-time for death and sin. 
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within : 
Till Despair smothers 
The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win. 
\_All the Furijes vanish, except one. 



Hark, sister ! what a low yet dreadful groan 
Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart 
Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep, 
And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves. 
Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him ! 

PANTHEA. 

Alas ! I looked forth twice, but will no more. 

IONE. 

What didst thou see ? 

PANTHEA. 

A woful sight : a youth 
With patient looks nailed to a crucifix. 



What next ? 



rANTHEA. 



The heaven around, the earth below 
Was peopled with thick shapes of human death, 
All horrible, and wrought by human hands, 
And some appeared the work of human hearts, 
For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles : 
And other sights too foul to speak and live 
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear 
By looking forth : those groans are grief enough. 

FURY. 

Behold an emblem : those who do endure 

Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but 

heap 
Thousandfold torment on themselves and him. 



100 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



PROMETHEUS. 

Remit the anguish of that lighted stave ; 
Close those wan lips : let that thorn-wounded brow 
Stream not with blood ; it mingles with thy tears ! 
Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death, 
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix, 
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore. 
O, horrible ! Thy name I will not speak; 
It hath become a curse. I see, I see 
The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just, 
Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee, 
Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home, 
An early-chosen, late-lamented home, 
As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind; 
Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells : 
Some — Hear I not the multitude laugh loud ? — 
Impaled in lingering fire : and mighty realms 
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles, 
Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood 
By the red light of their own burning homes. 



Blood thou canst see, and fire ; and canst hear groans : 
Worse things unheard, unseen, remain behind. 



PROMETHEUS. 



Worse? 



FURY. 

In each human heart terror survives 
The ravin it has gorged : the loftiest fear 
All that they would disdain to think were true : 
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds 
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn. 
They dare not devise good for man's estate, 
And yet they know not that they do not dare. 
The good want power, but to weep barren tears. 
The powerful goodness want : worse need for them. 
The wise want love; and those who love want 
And all best things are thus confused to ill. [wisdom ; 
Many are strong and rich, and would be just, 
But five among their suffering fellow-men 
As if none felt : they know not what they do. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes ; 
And yet I pity those they torture not. 

FURY. 

Thou pitiest them ? I speak no more ! [ Vanishes. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Ah woe ! 
Ah woe ! Alas ! pain, pain ever, for ever ! 
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear 
Thy works within my woe-illumined mind, 
Thou subtle tyrant ! Peace is in the grave. 
The grave hides all things beautiful and good : 
I am a God and cannot find it there, 
Nor would I seek it : for, though dread revenge, 
This is defeat, fierce king ! not victory. 
The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul 
With new endurance, till the hour arrives 
When they shall be no types of things which are. 



Alas! 



PANTHEA. 

what sawest thou ? 



PROMETHEUS. 

There are two woes : 
To speak and to behold ; thou spare me one. 
Names are there, Nature's sacred watch- words, they 
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry ; 



The nations thronged around, and cried aloud, 
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love ! 
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven 
Among them : there was strife, deceit, and fear : 
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil. 
This was the shadow of the truth I saw. 

THE EARTH. 

I felt thy torture, son, with such mixed joy 
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state 
I bid ascend those subtle and fail* spirits, 
Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought, 
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, 
Its world-surrounding ether : they behold 
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass, 
The future : may they speak comfort to thee ! 

PANTHEA. 

Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather, 
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather, 
Thronging in the blue air ! 

IONE. 

And see ! more come, 
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb, 
That clinib up the ravine in scattered lines. 
And hark ! is it the music of the pines ? 
Is it the lake ? Is it the waterfall % 

PANTHEA. 

'Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all. 

CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 

From unremembered ages we 
Gentle guides and guardians be 
Of heaven-oppressed mortality ! 
And we breathe, and sicken not, 
The atmosphere of human thought : 
Be it dim, and dank, and grey, 
Like a storm-extinguished day, 
Travelled o'er by dying gleams : 

Be it bright as all between 
Cloudless skies and windless streams, 

Silent, liquid, and serene ; 
As the birds within the wind, 

As the fish within the wave, 
As the thoughts of man's own mind 

Float through all above the grave : 
We make there our liquid lair, 
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent 
Through the boundless element : 
Thence we bear the prophecy 
Which begins and ends in thee ! 

IONE. 

More yet come, one by one : the air around them 
Looks radiant as the air around a star. 

FIRST SPIRIT. 

On a battle-trumpet's blast 
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast, 
'Mid the darkness upward cast. 
From the dust of creeds outworn, 
From the tyrant's banner torn, 
Gathering round me, onward borne, 
There was mingled many a cry — 
Freedom ! Hope ! Death ! Victory ! 
Till they faded through the sky ; 
And one sound above, around, 
One sound beneath, around, above, 
Was moving ; 'twas the soul of love ; 
'Twas the hope, the prophecy, 
Which begins and ends in thee. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 



107 



SECOND SPIRIT. 

A rainbow's arch stood on the sea, 
Which rocked beneath, immoveably ; 
And the triumphant storm did flee, 
Like a conqueror, swift and proud, 
Between with many a captive cloud, 
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd, 
Each by lightning riven in half : 
I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh : 
Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff 
And spread beneath a hell of death 
O'er the white waters. I alit 
On a great ship lightning-split, 
And speeded hither on the sigh 
Of one who gave an enemy 
His plank, then plunged aside to die. 

THIRD SPIRIT. 

I sate beside a sage's bed, 

And the lamp was burning red 

Near the book where he had fed, 

When a Dream with plumes of flame, 

To his pillow hovering came, 

And I knew it was the same 

Which had kindled long ago 

Pity, eloquence, and woe ; 

And the world awhile below 

Wore the shade its lustre made. 

It has borne me here as fleet 

As Desire's lightning feet : 

I must ride it back ere morrow, 

Or the sage will wake in sorrow. 

FOURTH SPIRIT. 

On a poet's lips I slept 

Dreaming like a love-adept 

In the sound his breathing kept ; 

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 

But feeds on the aerial kisses 

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. 

He will watch from dawn to gloom 

The lake-reflected sun illume 

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, 

Nor heed nor see, what things they be ; 

But from these create he can 

Forms more real than living man, 

Nurslings of immortality 1 

One of these awakened me, 

And I sped to succour thee. 

IONE. 

Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and 

west 
Come, as two doves to one beloved nest, 
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air, 
On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere ? 
And, hark ! their sweet sad voices ! 'tis despair 
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound. 

PANTHEA. 

Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned. 

IONE. 

Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float 
On their sustaining wings of skiey grain, 
Orange and azure deepening into gold : 
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire. 

CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 

Hast thou beheld the form of Love ? 



FIFTH SPIRIT. 

As over wide dominions 
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide 

air's wildernesses, 
That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning- 
braided pinions, 
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial 

tresses : 
His footsteps paved the world with light ; but as I 

past 'twas fading, 
And hollow Ruin yawned behind : great sages bound 

in madness, 
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, 

unupbraiding, 
Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, 

O King of sadness, 
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected 

gladness. 

SIXTH SPIRIT. 

An, sister ! Desolation is a delicate thing : 

It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air, 

But treads with silent footstep, and fans with silent 

wing 
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best 

and gentlest bear •, 
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes 

above, 
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and 

busy feet, 
Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the monster, 

Love, 
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom 

now we greet. 

CHORUS. 

Though Ruin now Love's shadow be, 
Following him, destroyingly, 

On Death's white and winged steed, 
Which the fleetest cannot flee, 

Trampling down both flower and weed, 
Man and beast, and foul and fair, 
Like a tempest through the air ; 
Thou shalt quell this horseman grim, 
Woundless though in heart or limb. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Spirits ! how know ye this shall be ? 

chorus. 

In the atmosphere we breathe, 
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee, 

From spring gathering up beneath, 
Whose mild winds shake the eider-brake, 
And the wandering herdsmen know- 
That the white-thorn soon will blow : 
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace, 
When they struggle to increase, 
Are to us as soft winds be 
To shepherd boys, the prophecy 
Which begins and ends in thee. 

IONE. 

Where are the Spirits fled ? 

PANTHEA. 

Only a sense 
Remains of them, like the omnipotence 
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute 
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute, 
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul, 
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll. 



108 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



PBOMSTH] 

How fail* these ur-born shapes! ami yet 1 feel 
Bfost vain all hope bttl love ; and thou art far, 
Asia ! who, when my being overflowed, 
Wort like a golden chalice to bright wine 

Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust. 
All things arc still: alas! how heavily 
This quiet morning weighs upon my heart ; 
Though I should dream I could even sleep with 

grief, 
If slumber were denied not. I would fain 
Be what it is my destiny to be, 
The saviour and the strength of suffering man, 
Or sink into the original gulf of things : 
There is no agony, and no solace left ; 
Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more. 



PANTHEA. 

Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee 
The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when 
The shadow of thy spirit falls ou her ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

I said all hope was vain but love : thou lovest. 

PANTHEA. 

Deeply in truth ; but the eastern star looks white, 
And Asia waits in that far Indian vale 
The scene of her sad exile ; rugged once 
And desolate and frozen, like this ravine ; 
But now invested with fair flowers and herbs, 
And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow 
AmoDg the woods and waters, from the ether 
Of her transforming presence, which would fade 
If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell ! 



END OF THE FIRST ACT. 



ACT II. 



SCENE I. 
Morning, A lonely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. 
Asia, alone. 
ASIA. 

From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended : 
Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes 
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes, 
And beatings haunt the desolated heart, [scended 
Which should have learnt repose : thou hast de- 
Cradled in tempests ; thou dost wake, Spring ! 
child of many winds ! As suddenly 
Thou ccmest as the memory of a dream, 
W T hich now is sad because it hath been sweet ; 
Like genius, or like joy w r hich riseth up 
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds 
The desert of our life. 
This is the season, this the day, the hour ; 
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine, 
Too long desired, too long delaying, come ! 
How like death- worms the wingless moments crawl ! 
The point of one white star is quivering still 
Deep in the orange light of widening morn 
Beyond the purple mountains : through a chasm 
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 
Reflects it ; now it wanes ; it gleams again 
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads 
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air : 
'Tis lost ! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow 
The roseate sun-light quivers : hear I not 
The ^Eohan music of her sea-green plumes 
Winnowing the crimson dawn ? 

panthea enters. 

I feel, I see 
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade 

in tears, 
Like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew. 
Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest 
The shadow of that soul by which I live, 
How late thou art ! the sphered sun had climbed 
The sea ; my heart was sick with hope, before 
The printless air felt thy belated plumes. 

PANTHEA. 

Pardon, great Sister ! but my wings were faint 
With the delight of a remembered dream, 



As are the noon-tide plumes of summer winds 
Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep 
Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm 
Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy 
Unhappy love, had made, through use and pity, 
Both love and woe familiar to my heart 
As they had grown to thine : ere while I slept 
Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean 
Within dim bowers of green and purple moss, 
Our young Ione's soft and milky arms 
Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair, 
While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within 
The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom : 
But not as now, since I am made the wind 
Which fails beneath the music that I bear 
Of thy most wordless converse ; since dissolved 
Into the sense with which love talks, my rest 
Was troubled and yet sweet ; my waking hours 
Too full of care and pain. 

ASIA. 

Lift up thine eyes, 
And let me read thy dream. 

PANTHEA. 

As I have said, 
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept. 
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice 
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes, 
From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep. 
Then two dreams came. One, I remember not. 
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs 
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night 
Grew radiant with the glory of that form 
Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell 
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain, 
Faint with intoxication of keen joy : 
" Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world 
With loveliness — more fair than aught but her, 
Whose shadow thou art — lift thine eyes on me." 
I lifted them : the overpowering light 
Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er 
By love ; which, from his soft and flowing limbs, 
And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes, 
Steamed forth like vaporous fire ; an atmosphere 
Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power 
As the warm ether of the morning sun 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



109 



Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew. 

I saw not, Heard not, moved not, only felt 

His presence flow and mingle through my blood 

Till it became his life, and his grew mine, 

And I was thus absorbed, until it passed, 

And like the vapours when the sun sinks down, 

Gathering again in drops upon the pines, 

And tremulous as they, in the deep night 

My being was condensed ; and as the rays 

Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear 

His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died 

Like footsteps of weak melody : thy name 

Among the many sounds alone I heard 

Of what might be articulate ; though still 

I listened through the night when sound was none. 

lone wakened then, and said to me : 

" Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night ? 

1 always knew what I desired before, 

Nor ever found delight to wish in vain, 

But now I cannot tell thee what I seek ; 

I. know not ; something sweet, since it is sweet 

Even to desire ; it is thy sport, false sister ; 

Thou hast discovered some enchantment old, 

Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept 

And mingled it with thine : for when just now 

We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips 

The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth 

Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint, 

Quivered between our intertwining arms." 

I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale, 

But fled to thee. 

ASIA. 

Thou speakest, but thy words 
Are as the air ; J feel them not : Oh, lift 
Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul ! 

PANTHEA. 

I lift them, though they droop beneath the load 
Of that they would express : what canst thou see 
But thine own fairest shadow imaged there ? 



Thine eyes are like tne deep, blue, boundless heaven 
Contracted to two circles underneath 
Their long, fine lashes ; dark, far, measureless, 
Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven. 

PANTHEA. 

Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed ? 

ASIA. 

There is a change ; beyond their inmost depth 

I see a shade, a shape : 'tis He, arrayed 

In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread 

Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded morn, 

Prometheus, it is thine ! depart not yet ! 

Say not those smiles that we shall meet again 

Within that bright pavilion which their beams 

Shall build on the waste world ? The dream is told. 

What shape is that between us ? Its rude hair 

Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard 

Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air, 

For through its grey robe gleams the golden dew 

Whose stars the noon has quenched not. 

DREAM. 

Follow ! Follow ! 

PANTHEA. 

It is mine other dream. 

ASIA. 

It disappears. 



PANTHEA. 

It passes now into my mind. Methought 
As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds 
Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond tree, 
When swift from the white Scythian wilderness 
A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost : 
I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down ; 
But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells 
Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief, 

0, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ! 

ASIA. 

As you speak, your words 
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep 
With shapes. Methought among the lawns together 
We wandered, underneath the young grey dawn, 
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds 
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains 
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind ; 
And the white dew on the new-bladed grass, 
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently ; 
And there was more which I remember not : 
But on the shadows of the morning clouds, 
Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written 
Follow, 0, follow ! As they vanished by, 
And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had 

fallen, 
The like was stamped, as with a withering fire, 
A wind arose among the pines ; it shook 
The clinging music from their boughs, and then 
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts, 
Were heard : Oh, follow, follow, follow me ! 
And then I said, " Panthea, look on me." 
But in the depth of those beloved eyes 
Still I saw, follow, follow ! 



Follow, follow ! 

PANTHEA. 

The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our 
As they were spirit-tongued. [voices, 



Around the crags. 



ASIA. 

It is some being 
What fine clear sounds ! O, list! 



echoes (unseen). 
Echoes we : listen ! 
We cannot stay : 
As dew-stars glisten 
Then fade away — 
Child of Ocean ! 



Hark ! Spirits, speak. The liquid responses 
Of their aerial tongues yet sound. 



I hear. 

echoes. 
0, follow, follow, 

As our voice recedeth 
Through the caverns hollow, 
Where the forest spreadeth ; 

(More distant.) 
0, follow, follow ! 
Through the caverns hollow, 
As the song floats thou pursue, 
Where the wild bee never flew, 



10 



PROMKT11KUS UNBOUND. 



Through the noon-tide darkness deep, 
l\v the odour-breathing sleep 
Of faint night-flowers, and the waves 
At the fountain-lighted eaves, 

While our music, wild ami sweet, 
Mocks thv gently falling feet, 
Child of Ocean ! 

ASIA. 

Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint 
And distant. 

PANTHEA. 

List ! the strain floats nearer now, 

echoes. 
In the world unknown 
Sleeps a voice unspoken ; 
By thy step alone 
Can its rest be broken ; 
Child of Ocean ! 



How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind ! 

ECHOES. 

O, follow, follow ! 

Through the caverns hollow, 
As the song floats thou pursue, 
By the woodland noon-tide dew ; 
By the forests, lakes, and fountains, 
Through the many-folded mountains ; 
To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms, 
Where the Earth reposed from spasms, 
On the day when He and thou 
Parted, to commingle now ; 
Child of Ocean ! 



Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine, 
And follow, ere the voices fade away. 



SCENE II. 

A Forest, intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. Asia 
Two young Fauns are sitting 



and Panthea pass into it. 
on a Rock, listening. 

SEMICHORUS I. OF SPIRITS. 

The path through which that lovely twain 
Have past, by cedar, pine, and yew, 
And each dark tree that ever grew, 
Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue ; 
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain, 
Can pierce its interwoven bowers, 
Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew, 
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze, 
Between the trunks of the hoar trees, 

Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers 
Of the green laurel, blown anew ; 
And bends, and then fades silently, 
One frail and fair anemone : 
Or when some star of many a one 
That climbs and wanders through steep night, 
Has found the cleft through which alone 
Beams fall from high those depths upon 
Ere it is borne away, away, 
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay, 
It scatters drops of golden light, 
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite : 
And the gloom divine is all around ; 
And underneath is the mossy ground. 



SEMICHORUS II. 

There the voluptuous nightingales, 

Are awake through all the broad noon-day, 
When one with bliss or sadness fails, 

And through the windless ivy-boughs, 
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away 
On its mate's music-panting bosom ; 
Another from the swinging blossom, 

Watching to catch the languid close 
Of the last strain, then lifts on high 
The wings of the weak melody, 
Till some new strain of feeling bear 

The song, and all the woods are mute ; 
When there is heard through the dim air 
The rush of wings, and rising there 

Like many a lake-surrounded flute, 
Sounds overflow the listener's brain 
So sweet, that joy is almost pain. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

There those enchanted eddies play 

Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw, 
By Demogorgon's mighty law, 
With melting rapture, or sweet awe, 

All spirits on that secret way ; 

As inland boats are driven to Ocean 

Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw ; 
And first there comes a gentle sound 
To those in talk or slumber bound, 
And wakes the destined, soft emotion 

Attracts, impels them ; those who saw 
Say from the breathing earth behind 
There streams a plume-uplifting wind 

Which drives them on their path, while they 
Believe their own swift wings and feet 

The sweet desires within obey : 

And so they float upon their way, 

Until, still sweet, but loud and strong, 
The storm of sound is driven along, 
Sucked up and hurrying : as they fleet 
Behind, its gathering billows meet 
And to the fatal mountain bear 
Like clouds amid the yielding air. 

FIRST FAUN. 

Canst thou imagine where those spirits live 
Which make such delicate music in the woods ? 
We haunt within the least frequented caves 
And closest coverts, and we know these wilds, 
Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft : 
Where may they hide themselves ? 

SECOND FAUN. 

Tis hard to tell: 
I have heard those more skilled in spirits say, 
The bubbles, which enchantment of the sun 
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave 
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools, 
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float 
Under the green and golden atmosphere 
Which noon-tide kindles through the woven leaves; 
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air, 
The which they breathed within those lucent domes, 
Ascends to flow like meteors through the night, 
They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed, 
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire 
Under the waters of the earth again. 

FIRST FAUN. 

If such live thus, have others other lives, 
Under pink blossoms or within the bells 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



ML 



Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep, 
Or on their dying odours, when they die, 
Or on the sunlight of the sphered dew ? 

SECOND FAUN. 

Ay, many more which we may well divine. 
But should we stay to speak, noontide would come, 
And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn, 
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs 
Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old, 
And Love, and the chained Titan's woful doom. 
And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth 
One brotherhood : delightful strains which cheer 
Our solitary twilights, and which charm 
To silence the unenvying nightingales. 



SCENE III. 

A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains. Asia and Vastus, a. 

PANTHEA. 

Hither the sound has borne us — to the realm 

Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal, 

Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm, 

Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up 

Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth, 

And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy, 

That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they dram 

To deep intoxication ; and uplift, 

Like Maenads who cry loud, Evoe ! Evoe ! 

The voice which is contagion to the world. 



Fit throne for such a Power ! Magnificent ! 
How glorious art thou, Earth ! And if thou be 
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, 
Though evil stain its work, and it should be 
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, 
I could fall down and worship that and thee. 
Even now my heart adoreth : Wonderful ! 
Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain : 
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist, 
As a lake, paving in the morning sky, 
With azure waves which burst in silver light, 
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on 
Under the curdling winds, and islanding 
The peak whereon we stand, midway, around, 
Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests, 
Dim twilight-lawns and stream-illumined caves, 
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist ; 
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains, 
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling 
The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray, 
From some Atlantic islet scattered up, 
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops. 
The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl 
Of Cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines 
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, 
Awful as silence. Hark ! the rushing snow ! 
The sun-awakened avalanche ! whose mass, 
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there 
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds 
As thought by thought is piled, till some great tru/:h 
Is loosened, and the nations echo round, 
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now. 



PANTHEA. 

Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking 
In crimson foam, even at our feet ! it rises 
As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon 
Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle. 



The fragments of the cloud are scattered up ; 
The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair ; 
Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes ; my brain 
Grows dizzy ; I see shapes within the mist. 

PANTHEA. 

A countenance with beckoning smiles : there burns 
An azure fire within its golden locks ! 
Another and another : hark ! they speak ! 

SONG OF SPIRITS. 

To the deep, to the deep, 

Down, down ! 
Through the shade of sleep, 
Through the cloudy strife 
Of Death and of Life ; 
Through the veil and the bar 
Of things which seem and are, 
Even to the steps of the remotest throne, 

Down, down ! 

While the sound whirls around, 

Down, down ! 
As the fawn draws the hound, 
As the lightning the vapour, 
As a weak moth the taper ; 
Death, despair ; love, sorrow ; 
Time both ; to-day, to-morrow ; 
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone, 

Down, down ! 

Through the grey, void abysm, 

Down, down ! 
Where the air is no prism, 
And the moon and stars are not, 
And the cavern-crags wear not 
The radiance of Heaven, 
Nor the gloom to Earth given, 
Where there is one pervading, one alone, 

Down, down ! 

In the depth of the deep 

Down, down ! 
Like veiled Hghtning asleep, 
Like the spark nursed in embers, 
The last look Love remembers, 
Like a diamond, which shines 
On the dark wealth of mines. 
A spell is treasured but for thee alone. 

Down, down ! 

We have bound thee, we guide thee ; 

Down, down ! 
With the bright form beside thee ; 
Resist not the weakness, 
Such strength is in meekness 
That the Eternal, the Immortal, 
Must unloose through fife's portal 
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his 

By that alone. [throne 



112 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



SCENE TV. 

The Cave qf Demogohoox. Asia and Panthea. 
PANTHEA. 

What veiled form sits on that ehon throne ? 



The veil has fallen. 

PANTHEA. 

I see a mighty darkness 
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom 
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun, 
Ungazed upon and shapeless ; neither limb, 
Nor form, nor outline ; yet we feel it is 
A living spirit. 

DEMOGORGON. 

Ask what thou wouldst know. 



What canst thou tell? 



DEMOGORGON. 

All things thou dar'st demand. 



ASIA. 

Who made the living world ? 

demogorgon. 

God. 

ASIA. 

Who made all 
That it contains ? thought, passion, reason, will, 
Imagination ? 

DEMOGORGON. 

God : Almighty God. 

ASIA. 

Who made that sense which, when the winds of 

In rarest visitation, or the voice [spring 

Of one beloved heard in youth alone, 

Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim 

The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers, 

And leaves this peopled earth a solitude 

When it returns no more ? 

DEMOGORGON. 

Merciful God. 

ASIA. 

And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse, 
Which from the links of the great chain of things, 
To every thought within the mind of man 
Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels 
Under the load towards the pit of death ; 
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate ; 
And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood ; 
Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech 
Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day ; 
And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell ? 



DEMOGORGON. 



He 



reigns 



Utter his name : a world pining in pain 

Asks but his name : curses shall drag him down. 



He reigns. 



DEMOGORGON. 
ASIA. 

I feel, I know it : who? 

DEMOGORGON. 



He reigns. 



Who reigns ? There was the Heaven and Earth at 

first, 
And Light and Love ; then Saturn, from whose throne 
Time fell, an envious shadow : such the state 
Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway, 
As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves 
Before the wind or sun has withered them 
And semi-vital worms ; but he refused 
The birthright of their being, knowledge, power, 
The skill which wields the elements, the thought 
Which pierces this dim universe like light, 
Self-empire, and the majesty of love ; 
For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus 
Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter, 
And with this law alone, " Let man be free," 
Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven. 
To know nor faith, nor love, nor law ; to be 
Omnipotent but friendless is to reign ; 
And Jove now reigned ; for on the race of man 
First famine, and then toil, and then disease, 
Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before, 
Fell ; and the unseasonable seasons drove, 
With alternating shafts of frost and fire, 
Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves : 
And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent, 
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle 
Of unreal good, which levied mutual war, 
So ruining the lair wherein they raged. 
Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes 
Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers, 
Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms, 
That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings 
The shape of Death ; and Love he sent to bind 
The disunited tendrils of that vine 
Which bears the wine of life, the human heart ; 
And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey, 
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath 
The frown of man ; and tortured to his will 
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power, 
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms 
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves. 
He gave man speech, and speech created thought, 
Which is the measure of the universe ; 
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, 
Which shook, but fell not ; and the harmonious mind 
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song : 
And music lifted up the listening spirit 
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care, 
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound ; 
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked, 
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own, 
The human form, till marble grew divine, 
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see 
Reflected in their race, behold, and perish. 
He told the hidden power of herbs and springs, 
And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep. 
He taught the implicated orbits woven 
Of the wide-wandering stars ; and how the sun 
Changes his lair, and by what secret spell 
The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye 
Gazes not on the interlunar sea : 
He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs, 
The tempest- winged chariots of the Ocean, 
And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then 
Were built, and through their snow-like columns 
The warm winds,and the azure aether shone, [flowed 
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen. 
Such, the alleviations of his state, 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



113 



Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs 
Withering in destined pain : but who rains down 
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while 
Man looks on his creation like a God 
And sees that it is glorious, drives him on 
The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth, 
The outcast, the abandoned, the alone ? 
Not Jove : while yet his frown shook heaven, aye, 
His adversary from adamantine chains [when 

Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare 
Who is his master ? Is he too a slave ? 

DEMOGORGON. 

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil: 
Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no. 

ASIA. 

Whom called'st thou God ? 

DEMOGORGON. 

I spoke but as ye speak, 
For Jove is the supreme of living things. 

ASIA. 

Who is the master of the slave ? 

DEMOGORGON. 

If the abysm 
Could vomit forth its secrets. But a voice 
Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless ; 
For what would it avail to bid thee gaze 
On the revolving world ? What to bid speak 
Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change? To these 
All things are subject but eternal Love. 

ASIA. 

So much I asked before, and my heart gave 
The response thou hast given ; and of such truths 
Each to itself must be the oracle. 
One more demand ; and do thou answer me 
As my own soul would answer, did it know 
That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise 
Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world : 
When shall the destined hour arrive ? 



DEMOGORGON. 



Behold ! 



The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night 
I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds 
Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands 
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight. 
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, 
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars : 
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink 
With eager lips the wind of their own speed, 
As if the thing they loved fled on before, [locks 
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright 
Stream like a comet's flashing hair : they all 
Sweep onward. 

DEMOGORGON. 

These are the immortal Hours, 
Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee. 

ASIA. 

A spirit with a dreadful countenance 
Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf. 
Unlike thy brethren, ghastly charioteer, [Speak ! 
Who art thou ? Whither wouldst thou bear me ? 

SPIRIT. 

I am the shadow of a destiny 
More dread than is my aspect : ere yon planet 
Has set, the darkness which ascends with me 
Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne. 



What meanest thou ? 

PANTHEA. 

That terrible shadow floats 
Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke 
Of earthquake- ruined cities o'er the sea. 
Lo ! it ascends the car ; the coursers fly 
Terrified : watch its path among the stars 
Blackening the night ! 



ASIA. 

Thus I am answered 



strange ! 



PANTHEA. 

See, near the verge, another chariot stays ; 
An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire, 
Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim 
Of delicate strange tracery ; the young spirit 
That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope ; 
How its soft smiles attract the soul ! as light 
Lures winged insects through the lampless air. 

SPIRIT. 

My coursers are fed with the lightning, 
They drink of the whirlwind's stream, 

And when the red morning is bright'ning 
They bathe in the fresh sunbeam ; 
They have strength for their swiftness I deem. 

Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. 

I desire : and their speed makes night kindle; 
I fear : they outstrip the Typhoon ; 

Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle 
We encircle the earth and the moon : 
We shall rest from long labours at noon : 

Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. 



SCENE V. 

The Car pausei within a Cloud on the Top of a snowy 
Mountain. 

Asia, Panthea, and the Spirit of the Horn. 

SPIRIT. 

On the brink of the night and the morning 
My coursers are wont to respire ; 

But the Earth has just whispered a warning 
That their flight must be swifter than fire : 
They shall drink the hot speed of desire ! 



Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath 
Would give them swifter speed. 



Alas ! it could not. 

PANTHEA. 

Oh Spirit ! pause, and tell whence is the fight 
Which fills the cloud ? the sun is yet unrisen. 

SPIRIT. 

The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo 
Is held in heaven by wonder ; and the light 
Which fills this vapour, as the aerial hue 
Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water, 
Flows from thy mighty sister. 



Yes, I feel — 



114 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



LSI \- 
What is it with thee, sister '. Thou art pale. 

r.wrur. \. 
How thou art changed ! 1 dare not look on theej 
1 (eel bu1 Bee thee not. 1 scarce endnre 
Tho radianoe of thy beauty. Some good change 
Is working in the elements, which suffer 
Thy presence thus unveiled. Tho Nereids toll 
That on the (lay when the clear hyaline 
Was cloven at thy uprise, and thou didst stand 
Within a veined shell, which floated on 
Over the calm door of the crystal sea, 
Among the Eeean isles, and by the shores 
Which bear thy name ; love, like the atmosphere 
Of the sun's fire filling the living world, 
Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven 
And the deep ocean and the sunless caves 
And all that dwells within them ; till grief cast 
Eclipse upon the soul from which it came : 
Such art thou now ; nor is it I alone, 
Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one, 
But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy. 
Hearest thou not sounds i' the air which speak the 

love 
Of all articulate beings ? Feelest thou not 
The inanimate winds enamoured of thee ? List ! 

\_Music. 

ASIA. 

Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his 
Whose echoes they are : yet all love is sweet, 
Given or returned. Common as light is love, 
And its familiar voice wearies not ever. 
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air, 
It makes the reptile equal to the God : 
They who inspire it most are fortunate, 
As I am now ; but those who feel it most 
Are happier still, after long sufferings, 
As I shall soon become. 



List ! Spirits, speak. 
voicb (in the air, singing). 
Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle 

With their love the breath between them ; 
And thy smiles before they dwindle 

Make the cold air fire ; then screen them 
In those looks, where whoso gazes 
Faints, entangled in their mazes. 

Child of Light ! thy limbs are burning 

Through the vest which seems to hide them ; 

As the radiant lines of morning 

Through the clouds, ere they divide them ; 

And tins atmosphere divinest 

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 



Fair are others ; none beholds thee, 
But thy voice sounds low and tender 

Like the fairest, for it folds thee 
From the sight, that liquid splendour, 

And all feel, yet see thee never, 

As I feel now, lost for ever ! 

Lamp of Earth ! where'er thou movest 
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, 

And the souls of whom thou lovest 
Walk upon the winds with lightness, 

Till they fail, as I am failing, 

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing ! 

ASIA. 

My soul is an enchanted boat, 

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float 
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing ; 

And thine doth like an angel sit 

Beside the helm conducting it, 
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. 

It seems to float ever, for ever, 

Upon that many-winding river, 

Between mountains, woods, abysses, 

A paradise of wildernesses ! 
Till, like one in slumber bound. 
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, 
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound. 

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions 

In music's most serene dominions ; 
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven. 

And we sail on, away, afar, 

Without a course, without a star, 
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven ; 

Till through Elysian garden islets 

By thee, most beautiful of pilots, 

Where never mortal pinnace glided, 

The boat of my desire is guided : 
Realms where the air we breathe is love, 
Which in the winds on the waves doth move, 
Harmonising this earth with what we feel above. 

We have passed Age's icy caves, 

And Manhood's dark and tossing waves, 
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray : 

Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee 

Of shadow-peopled Infancy, 
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day ; 

A paradise of vaulted bowers 

Lit by downward-gazing flowers, 

And watery paths that wind between 

Wildernesses calm and green, 
Peopled by shapes too bright to see, 
And rest, having beheld ; somewhat like thee ; 
Which walk upon the sea, and chant melo- 
diously ! 



END OF THE SECOND ACT. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



ACT III. 



SCENE I. 

Jtm'itkr on hit Throne; Thetis and the other 
Deities assembled. 



Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share 

The glory and the strength of him ye serve, 

Rejoice ! henceforth I am omnipotent. 

All else had been subdued to me ; alone 

The soul of man, like unextinguished fire, 

Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, 

and doubt, 
And lamentation, and reluctant prayer, 
Hurling up insurrection, which might make 
Our antique empire insecure, though built 
On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear ; 
And though my curses through the pendulous air, 
Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake, 
And cling to it ; though under my wrath's night 
It climb the crags of life, step after step, 
Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet, 
It yet remains supreme o'er misery, 
Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall : 
Even now have I begotten a strange wonder, 
That fatal child, the terror of the earth, 
Who waits but till the destined hour arrive, 
Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne 
The dreadful might of ever-living limbs 
Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld, 
To redescend, and trample out the spark. 

Pour forth heaven's wine, Idsean Ganymede, 

And let it fill the Daedal cups like fire, 

And from the flower-inwoven soil divine, 

Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise, 

As dew from earth under the twilight stars : 

Drink ! be the nectar circling through your veins 

The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods, 

Till exultation burst in one wide voice 

Like music from Elysian winds. 

And thou 
Ascend beside me, veiled in the light 
Of the desire which makes thee one with me, 
Thetis, bright image of eternity ! 
When thou didst cry, " Insufferable might ! 
God ! Spare me ! I sustain not the quick flames, 
The penetrating presence ; all my being, 
Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw 
Into a dew with poison, is dissolved, 
Sinking through its foundations : " even then 
Two mighty spirits, mingling made a third 
Mightier than either, which, unbodied now, 
Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld, 
Waiting the incarnation, which ascends, 
(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels 
Griding the winds ?) from Demogorgon's throne. 
Victory ! victory ! Feelest thou not, O world ! 
The earthquake of his chariot thundering up 
Olympus ? 

The Car of the Hour arrives. Demogorgon des- 
cends and moves towards the Throne of Jupiter. 

Awful shape, what art thou ? Speak ! 



DEMOGORGON. 

Eternity. Demand no direr name. 

Descend, and follow me down the abyss. 

I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child ; 

Mightier than thee : and we must dwell fcogethei 

Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings nut 

The tyranny of heaven none may retain, 

Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee : 

Yet if thou wilt, as 'tis the destiny 

Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead, 

Put forth thy might. 



Detested prodigy ! 
Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons 
I trample thee ! Thou lingerest ? 

Mercy ! mercy ! 
No pity, no release, no respite ! Oh, 
That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge, 
Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge, 
On Caucasus ! he would not doom me thus. 
Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not 
The monarch of the world ? What then art thou ? 
No refuge ! no appeal ! 

Sink with me then, 
We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin, 
Even as a vulture and a snake outspent 
Drop, twisted in inextricable fight, 
Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock 
Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire, 
And whelm on them into the bottomless void 
This desolated world, and thee, and me, 
The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck 
Of that for which they combated. 

Ai ! Ai ! 
The elements obey me not. I sink 
Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down. 
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above 
Darkens my fall with Victory ! Ai, Ai ! 



SCENE II. 

The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis. Ocean 
is discovered reclining near the Shore ,• Apollo stands 
beside him. 

OCEAN. 

He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror's frown? 

APOLLO. 

Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim 

The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars, 

The terrors of his eye illumined heaven 

With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts 

Of the victorious darkness, as he fell : 

Like the last glare of day's red agony, 

Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds, 

Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep. 

OCEAN. 

He sunk to the abyss ? To the dark void I 



i in 



riiOMKTHKUS UN HOUND. 



kPoixa 
An eagle so caught in Borne bursting cloud 
On Caucasus, liis thunder-baffled wings 
Entangled in the whirlwind, and Ins eyes 
Which gaaed on the nnda/./.ling sun, now blinded 
IK the white lightning, while the ponderous hail 
Beats on Ins struggling form, which sinks at length 
Prone, and the aerial ice clings over it. 

OCF.AN. 

Henceforth the fields of Heaven-reflecting sea 

Which aromvreahn,willheave,unstainedwith blood, 
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of com 
Swayed by the summer air ; my streams will flow 
Round many peopled continents, and round 
Fortunate isles ; and from their glassy thrones 
Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark 
The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see 
The Heating bark of the light laden moon 
With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest, 
Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea; 
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans, 
And desolation, and the mingled voice 
Of slavery and command ; but by the light 
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours, 
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices, 
That sweetest music, such as spirits love. 

APOLLO. 

And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make 
My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse 
Darkens the sphere I guide ; but list, I hear 
The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit 
That sits i' the morning star. 

OCEAN. 

Thou must away ; 
Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell : 
The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it 
With azure calm out of the emerald urns 
Which stand for ever full beside my throne. 
Behold the Nereids under the green sea, 
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream, 
Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair 
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns, 
Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy. 

\_A sound of waves is heard. 
It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm. 
Peace, monster ; I come now. Farewell. 

APOLLO. 

Farewell. 



SCENE III. 

Caucasus. Prometheus, Hercules, Ione, the Earth, 
Spirits, Asia, and Panthea, borne in the Car with the 
Spirit ok the Hour. 

Hercules unbinds Prometheus, who descends. 

HERCULES. 

Most glorious among spirits ! thus doth strength 
To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love, 
And thee, who art the form they animate, 
Minister like a slave. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Thy gentle words 
Are sweeter even than freedom long desired 
And long delayed. 

Asia, thou light of life, 



Shadow of beauty unbeheld ; and ye, 

Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain 

Sweet to remember, through your love and care ; 

1 [enceforth we will not part. There is a cave, 

All overgrown with trailing odorous plants, 

Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers, 

And paved with veined emerald, and a fountain, 

Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound. 

From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears, 

Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires, 

Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light : 

And there is heard the ever-moving air, 

Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds, 

And bees ; and all around are mossy seats, 

And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass ; 

A simple dwelling, which shall be our own ; 

Where we will sit and talk of time and change, 

As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged. 

What can hide man from mutability ? 

And if ye sigh, then I will smile ; and thou, 

Ione, shall chaunt fragments of sea-music^ 

Until I weep, when ye shall smile away 

The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed. 

We will entangle buds and flowers and beams 

Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make 

Strange combinations out of common things, 

Like human babes in their brief innocence ; 

And we will search with looks and words of love, 

For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last, 

Our unexhausted spirits ; and like lutes 

Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind, 

Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new, 

From difference sweet where discord cannot be ; 

And hither come, sped on the charmed winds, 

Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees 

From every flower aerial Enna feeds, 

At their known island-homes in Himera, 

The echoes of the human world, which tell 

Of the low voice of love, almost unheard, 

And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music, 

Itself the echo of the heart, and all 

That tempers or improves man's life, now free ; 

And lovely apparitions, dim at first, 

Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright 

From the embrace of beauty, whence the forms 

Of which these are the phantoms, casts on them 

The gathered rays which are reality, 

Shall visit us, the progeny immortal 

Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy, 

And arts, though unimagined, yet to be. 

The wandering voices and the shadows these 

Of all that man becomes, the mediators 

Of that best worship, love, by him and us [grow 

Given and returned ; swift shapes and sounds, which 

More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind, 

And veil by veil, evil and error fall : 

Such virtue has the cave and place around. 

{Turning to the Spirit of the Hour. 

For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione, 
Give her that curved shell, which Proteus old, 
Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it 
A voice to be accomplished, and which thou 
Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock. 



Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely 
Than all thy sisters, this the mystic shell ; 
See the pale azure fading into silver 
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light : 
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there ? 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



17 



SPIRIT. 

It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean : 

Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange. 

PROMETHEUS. 

Go, borne over the cities of mankind 
(>n whirlwind-footed coursers: once again 
Outspeed the sun around the orbed world ; 
And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air, 
Thou breathe into the many -folded shell, 
Loosening its mighty music ; it shall be 
As thunder mingled with clear echoes : then 
Return ; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave. 

And thou, Mother Earth !— 

THE EARTH. 

I hear, I feel ; 
Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down 
Even to the adamantine c«. itral gloom 
Along these marble nerves ; 'tis life, 'tis joy, 
And, through my withered, old, and icy frame 
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down 
Circling. Henceforth the many children fair 
Folded in my sustaining arms ; all plants, 
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged, 
And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes, 
Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom, 
Draining the poison of despair, shall take 
And interchange sweet nutriment ; to me 
Shall they become like sister-antelopes 
By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind, 
Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream. 
The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float 
Under the stars like balm : night-folded flowers 
Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose : 
And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather 
Strength for the coming day, and all its joy : 
And death shall be the last embrace of her 
Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother, 
Folding her child, says, " Leave me not again." 



Oh, mother ! wherefore speak the name of death ! 
Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and 
Who die? [speak, 

THE EARTH. 

It would avail not to reply : 
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 
But to the uncommunicating dead. 
Death is the veil which those who live call life : 
They sleep, and it is lifted : and meanwhile 
In mild variety the seasons mild 
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds, 
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night, 
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's 
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain 
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild, 
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, aye, even 
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep, 
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers. 
And thou ! There is a cavern where my spirit 
Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain 
Made my heart mad, and those that did inhale it 
Became mad too, and built a temple there, 
And spoke, and were oracular, and lured 
The erring nations round to mutual war, 
And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee ; 
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds 
A violet's exhalation, and it fills 



With a serener light and crimson air 
Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around ; 
It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine, 
And the dark linked ivy tangling wild, 
And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms 
Which star the winds with points of coloured light, 
As they rain through them, and bright golden globes 
Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven, 
And through their veined leaves and amber steins 
The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls 
Stand ever mantling with afirial dew, 
The drink of spirits : and it circles round, 
Like the soft waving wings of noonday divan is, 
Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine, 
Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine. 
Arise ! Appear ! 

\_A Spirit rite* in the likeness of a wukj d child. 
This is my torch-bearer ; 
Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing 
On eyes from which he kindled it anew 
With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine, 
For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward, 
And guide this company beyond the peak 
Of Bacchic Nysa, Maenad-haunted mountain, 
And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers, 
Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes 
With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying, 
And up the green ravine, across the vale, 
Beside the windless and crystalline pool, 
Where ever lies, on unerasing waves, 
The image of a temple, built above, 
Distinct with column, arch, and architrave, 
And palm-like capital, and over-wrought, 
And populous most with living imagery, 
Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles 
Fill the hushed air with everlasting love. 
It is deserted now, but once it bore 
Thy name, Prometheus ; there the emulous youths 
Bore to thy honour through the divine gloom 
The lamp which was thine emblem ; even as those 
Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope 
Into the grave, across the night of life, 
As thou hast borne it most triumphantly 
To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell. 
Beside that temple is the destined cave. 



SCENE IV. 

A Forest. In the Back-ground a Cave. Prcmetheis, 
Asia, Panthea, Ione, and the Spirit of the Earth. 

IONE. 
Sister, it is not earthly : how it glides 
Under the leaves ! how on its head there burns 
A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams 
Are twined with its fair hair ! how, as it moves, 
The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass ! 
Knowest thou it ? 

panthea. 
It is the delicate spirit 
That guides the earth through heaven. From afar 
The populous constellations call that light 
The loveliest of the planets ; and sometimes 
It floats along the spray of the salt sea, 
Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud, 
Or walks through fields or cities while men Bleep, 
Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the rivers, 
Or through the green waste wilderness, as now, 



1111 



PROMETHEUS UNROUND 



Wondering at all it sees. Before Jore reigned 
It loved our sister Asia, rod it came 
Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light 
Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted 
Ka one bit by a dipsas, ami with her 
It made its childish confidence, ami told her 
Ail it had known or soon, for it saw mucdi, 
Yet idly reasoned what it saw ; and called her, 
For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I, 
Mother, dear mother. 

thk BFOUX ov the karth {running to Asia). 
Mother, dearest mother ; 
May I then talk with thee as I was wont? 
.May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms, 
After thy looks have made them tired of joy? 
May I then play beside thee the long noons, 
When work is none in the bright silent air? 



I love thee, gentlest being ! and henceforth 
Can cherish thee unenvied. Speak, I pray : 
Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights. 

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. 

Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child 
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day ; 
And happier too ; happier and wiser both, [worms, 
Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly 
And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs* 
That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever 
A hindrance to my walks o'er the green world : 
And that, among the haunts of humankind, 
Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks, 
Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles, 
Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance, 
Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts 
Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man ; 
And women too, ugliest of all things evil, 
(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair, 
When good and kind, free and sincere like thee), 
When false or frowning made me sick at heart 
To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen. 
Well, my path lately lay through a great city 
Into the woody hills surrounding it : 
A sentinel was sleeping at the gate : 
When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook 
The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet 
Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all ; 
A long, long sound, as it would never end : 
And all the inhabitants leapt suddenly 
Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets, 
Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet 
The music pealed along. I hid myself 
Within a fountain in the public square, 
Where I lay like the reflex of the moon 
Seen in a wave under green leaves ; and soon 
Those ugly human shapes and visages 
Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain, 
Past floating through the air, and fading still 
Into the winds that scattered them ; and those 
From whom they past seemed mild and lovely forms 
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all 
Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise 
And greetings of delighted wonder, all 
Went to their sleep again : and when the dawn 
Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, 
Could e'er be beautiful ? yet so they were, [and efts, 
And that with little change of shape or hue : 
All things had put their evil nature off: 



1 cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake 

Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined, 

1 saw two azure halcyons clinging downward 

And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries, 

With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay 

Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky; 

So with my thoughts full of these happy changes, 

We meet again, the happiest change of all. 

ASIA. 

And never will we part, till thy chaste sister, 
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon, 
Will look on thy more warm and equal light 
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow, 
And love thee. 

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. 

What ! as Asia loves Prometheus * 



Peace, wanton ! thou art yet not old enough. 
Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes 
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill 
With sphered fires the interlunar air ? 

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. 

Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp 
'Tis hard I should go darkling. 

ASIA. 

Listen ; look ! 
The Spirit of the Hour enters. 

PROMETHEUS. 

We feel what thou hast heard and seen : yet speak. 

SPIRIT OF THE HOUR. 

Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled 
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth, 
There was a change : the impalpable thin air 
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed, 
As if the sense of love, dissolved in them, 
Had folded itself round the sphered world. 
My vision then grew clear, and I could see 
Into the mysteries of the universe : 
Dizzy as with delight I floated down, 
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes, 
My coursers sought their birth-place in the sun, 
Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil, 
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire. 
And where my moonlike car will stand within 
A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms 
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me, 
And you fair nymphs, looking the love we feel ; 
In memory of the tidings it has borne ; 
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers, 
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone, 
And open to the bright and liquid sky. 
Yoked to it by an amphisbsenic snake 
The likeness of those winged steeds will mock 
The flight from which they find repose. Alas, 
Whither has wandered now my partial tongue 
When all remains untold which ye would hear ? 
As I have said, I floated to the earth : 
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss 
To move, to breathe, to be ; I wandering went 
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind, 
And first was disappointed not to see 
Such mighty change, as I had felt within, 
Expressed in outward things ; but soon I looked, 
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked 
One with the other even as spirits do, 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



11!) 



None fawned, none trampled ; hate, disdain, or fear, 

Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows 

No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, 

" All hope abandon ye who enter here ;" 

None frown'd, none trembled, none with eager fear 

Gazed on another's eye of cold command, 

Until the subject of a tyrant's will 

Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, 

Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death. 

None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines 

Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak ; 

None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart 

The sparks of love and hope till there remained 

Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed, 

And the wretch crept a vampire among men, 

Infecting all with his own hideous ill ; 

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk 

Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes, 

Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy 

With such a self-mistrust as has no name. 

And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind 

As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew 

On the wide earth, past ; gentle radiant forms, 

From custom's evil taint exempt and pure ; 

Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, 

Looking emotions once they feared to feel, 

And changed to all which once they dared not be, 

Yet being now, made earth like heaven ; nor pride, 

Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill-shame, 

The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall, 

Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, lov<\ 

Thrones, altars, judgment seats, and prisons ; 

wherein, 
And beside which, by wretched men were borne 
Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes 
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance, 
Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes, 



The ghosts of a no more remembered fame, 
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth 
In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs [round 
Of those who were their conquerors : mouldering 
Those imaged to the pride of kings and priests, 
A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide 
As is the world it wasted, and are now 
But an astonishment ; even so the tools 
And emblems of its last captivity, 
Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth, 
Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now. 
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man, 
Which, under many a name and many a form, 
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable, 
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world ; 
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served 
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and 
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandlass, [love 
And slain among men's unreclaiming tears, [hate, 
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was 
Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned 

shrines : 
The painted veil, by those who were, called life, 
Which mimick'd, as with colours idly spread, 
All men believed and hoped, is torn aside ; 
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains 
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man 
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, 
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king 
Over himself; just, gentle, wise : but man 
Passionless ; no, yet free from guilt or pain, 
Which were, for his will made or suffered them, 
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, 
From chance, and death, and mutability, 
The clogs of that which else might oversoar 
The loftiest star of unascended heaven, 
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane. 

END OF THE THIRD ACT. 



ACT IV. 



Scene,— Apart of the Forest near the Cave of Prometheus. 
Panthea and Ione are sleeping : they awaken gradually 
during the first Song. 

VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS. 

The pale stars are gone ! 
For the sun, their swift shepherd 
To their folds them compelling, 
In the depths of the dawn, 
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee 
Beyond his blue dwelling, 
As fawns flee the leopard, 
But where are ye ? 

A Train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly 
singing. 

Here, oh ! here : 

We bear the bier 
Of the Father of many a cancelled year ! 

Spectres we 

Of the dead Hours be, 
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity. 

Strew, oh ! strew 
Hair, not yew ! 



Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew ! 

Be the faded flowers 

Of Death's bare bowers 
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours ! 

Haste, oh, haste ! 

As shades are chased, 
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste. 

We melt away, 

Like dissolving spray, 
From the children of a diviner day, 

With the lullaby 

Of winds that die 
On the bosom of their own harmony ! 

IONE. 

What dark forms were they ? 

PANTHEA. 

The past Hours weak and grey, 
With the spoil which their toil 

Raked together 
From the conquest but One could foil. 

IONE. 

Have they past ? 



I 'JO 



PHOMr/niKl 1 * UNBOUND. 



PANTBXA. 

They have past : 
They outspeeded the Mast, 
While 'tis said, they arc fled : 

IONE. 

Whither, eh ! whither? 

rwniEA. 
To the dark, to the past, to the dead. 

VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS. 
Blight clouds float in heaven, 
Dow-stars gleam on earth, 
Waves assemble on ocean, 
They are gathered and driven 
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee ! 
They shake with emotion, 
They dance in their mirth. 
But where are ye ? 

The pine boughs are singing 
Old songs with new gladness, 
The billows and fountains 
Fresh music are flinging, 
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea ; 
The storms mock the mountains 
With the thunder of gladness, 
But where are ye ? 

IONE. 

What charioteers are these ? 

PANTHEA. 

Where are their chariots ? 

SEMI CHORUS OF HOURS. 

The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth 
Have drawn back the figured curtain of sleep, 
Which covered our being and darkened our birth 
In the deep. 

A VOICE. 

In the deep ? 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Oh I below the deep. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

A hundred ages we had been kept 
Cradled in visions of hate and care, 
And each one who waked as his brother slept, 
Found the truth — 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Worse than his visions were ! 

SEMICHORUS I. 

We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep ; 
We have known the voice of Love in dreams, 
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap — 

SEMICHORUS II. 

As the billows leap in the morning beams ! 

CHORUS. 

Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze, 
Pierce with song heaven's silent light, 

Enchant the day that too swiftly flees, 
To check its flight ere the cave of night 

Once the hungry Hours were hounds 

Which chased the day like a bleeding deer, 

And it limped and stumbled with many wounds 
Through the nightly dells of the desert year. 



But now, oh ! weave the mystic measure 
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light, 

Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and 
pleasure, 
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite. 

A VOICE. 

Unite. 

PANTHEA. 

See, where the Spirits of the human mind 
Wrapt in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, 
approach. 

CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 

We join the throng 

Of the dance and the song, 
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along ; 

As the flying-fish leap 

From the Indian deep, 
And mix with the sea-birds half-asleep. 

CHORUS OF HOURS. 

Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet, 
For sandals of lightning are on your feet, 
And your wings are soft and swift as thought, 
And your eyes are as love which is veiled not ? 

CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 

We come from the mind 

Of human kind, 
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind; 

Now 'tis an ocean 

Of clear emotion, 
A heaven of serene and mighty motion. 

From that deep abyss 
Of wonder and bliss, 
Whose caverns are crystal palaces ; 
From those skiey towers 
Where Thought's crowned powers 
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours ! 

From the dim recesses 

Of woven caresses, 
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses ; 

From the azure isles, 

Where sweet Wisdom smiles, 
Delaying your ships with her syren wiles. 

From the temples high 

Of Man's ear and eye, 
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy ; 

From the murmurings 

Of the unsealed springs 
Where Science bedews his Daedal wings. 

Years after years, 

Through blood, and tears, 
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears ; 

We waded and flew, 

And the islets were few 
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness 
grew. 

Our feet now, every palm, 

Are sandalled with calm, 
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm ; 

And, beyond our eyes, 

The human love lies, 
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise. 



riiOMETIIEUS UNBOUND. 



121 



CHORUS OF SPIRITS AND HOURS. 

Then weave the web of the mystic measure ; 
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth. 

Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure. 
Fill the dance and the music of mirth, 

As the waves of a thousand streams rush by 

To an ocean of splendour and harmony ! 

CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 

Our spoil is won, 

Our task is done, 
We are free to dive, or soar, or run ; 

Beyond and around, 

Or within the bound 
Which clips the world with darkness round. 

We'll pass the eyes 

Of the starry skies 
Into the hoar deep to colonize : 

Death, Chaos, and Night, 

From the sound of our flight, 
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might. 

And Earth, Air, and Light, 

And the Spirit of Might, 
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight : 

And Love, Thought, and Breath, 

The powers that quell Death, 
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath. 

And our singing shall build 
In the void's loose field 
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield ; 
We will take our plan 
From the new world of man 
And our work shall be called the Promethean. 

CHORUS OF HOURS. 

Break the dance, and scatter the song ; 
Let some depart, and some remain. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

We, beyond heaven, are driven along : 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Us the enchantments of earth retain : 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free, 

With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea, 

And a heaven where yet heaven could never be. 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright, 
Leading the Day, and outspeeding the Night, 
With the powers of a world of perfect light. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere, 
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear 
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear. 

SEMICHORUS II. 

We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth, 
And the happy forms of its death and birth 
Change to the music of our sweet mirth. 

CHORUS OF HOURS AND SPIRITS. 

Break the dance, and scatter the song, 
Let some depart, and some remain, 
Wherever we fly we lead along 
In leashes, like star-beams, soft yet strong, 
The clouds thatare heavy with love's sweet rain. 



Ha ! they are gone ! 

IONE. 

Yet feel you no delight 
From the past sweetness ? 

PANTHEA. 

As the bare green hill 
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain, 
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water 
To the unpavilioned sky ! 

IONE. 

Even whilst we speak 
New notes arise. What is that awful sound ? 

PANTHEA. 

'Tis the deep music of the rolling world, 
Kindling within the strings of the waved air 
^Eolian modulations. 

IONE. 

Listen too, 
How every pause is filled with under-notes, 
Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones, 
Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul, 
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air 
And gaze upon themselves within the sea. 

PANTHEA. 

But see where, through two openings in the forest 
Which hanging branches overcanopy, 
And where two runnels of a rivulet, 
Between the close moss, violet inwoven, 
Have made their path of melody, like sisters 
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles, 
Turning their dear disunion to an isle 
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts ; 
Two visions of strange radiance float upon 
The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound, 
Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet 
Under the ground and through the windless air. 

IONE. 

I see a chariot like that thinnest boat 

In which the mother of the months is borne 

By ebbing night into her western cave, 

When she upsprings from interlunar dreams, 

O'er which is curbed an orblike canopy 

Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods 

Distinctly seen through that dusk airy veil, 

Regard hke shapes in an enchanter's glass ; 

Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold, 

Such as the genii of the thunder-storm 

Pile on the floor of the illumined sea 

When the sun rushes under it ; they roll 

And move and grow as with an inward wind ; 

Within it sits a winged infant, white 

Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow, 

Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost, 

Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing 

folds 
Of its white robe, woof of setherial pearl. 
Its hair is white, the brightness of white light 
Scattered in strings ; yet its two eyes are heavens 
Of liquid darkness, which the Deity 
Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured 
From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes, 
Tempering the cold and radiant air around, 
With fire that is not brightness ; in its hand 
It sways a quivering moon-beam, from whose point 



122 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



A guiding power directs the chariot's prow 
Oyer ite wheeled clouds, which as they roll 
Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds, 

Sweet as a ringing rain of silver Jew. 

r.VM'lIK.V. 

And from the other opening in the wood 

Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony, 

A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres, 

Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass 

Flow, as through empty space, music and light : 

Ten thousand orbs involving and involved, 

Purple and azure, white, green and golden, 

Sphere within sphere ; and every space between 

Peopled with unimaginable shapes, 

Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep, 

Vet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl 

Over each other with a thousand motions, 

Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning, 

And with the force of self-destroying swiftness, 

Intensely, slowly, solemnly, roll on, 

Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones, 

Intelligible words and music wild. 

With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb 

Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist 

Of elemental subtlety, like light ; 

And the wild odour of the forest flowers, 

The music of the living grass and air, 

The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams 

Round its intense yet self- conflicting speed, 

Seem kneaded into one aerial mass 

Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself, 

Pillowed upon its alabaster arms, 

Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil, 

On its own folded wings, and wavy hair, 

The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep, 

And you can see its little lips are moving, 

Amid the changing light of their own smiles, 

Like one who talks of what he loves in dream. 



: Tis only mocking the orb's harmony. 

PANTHEA. ■? 

And from a star upon its forehead, shoot, 
Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears 
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined, 
Embleming heaven and earth united now, 
Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel 
Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought, 
Filling the abyss with sun-like lightnings, 
And perpendicular now, and now transverse, 
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass, 
Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart ; 
Infinite mine of adamant and gold, 
Valueless stones, and unimagined gems, 
And caverns on crystalline columns poised 
With vegetable silver overspread ; 
Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs 
Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed, [tops 
Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain- 
With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on 
And make appear the melancholy ruins 
Of cancelled cycles ; anchors, beaks of ships ; 
Planks turned to marble ; quivers, helms, and spears, 
And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels 
Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry 
Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts, 
Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems 
Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin ! 
The wrecks beside of many a city vast, 



Whose population which the earth grew over 
Was mortal, but not human ; see, they lie 
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons, 
Their statues, homes and lanes; prodigious shapes 
Huddled in grey annihilation, split, 
dammed in the hard, black deep ; and over these, 
The anatomies of unknown winged things, 
And fishes which were isles of living scale, 
And serpents, bony chains, twisted around 
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust 
To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs 
Had crushed the iron crags ; and over these 
The jagged alligator, and the might 
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once 
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores, 
And weed-overgrown continents of earth, 
Increased and multiplied like summer worms 
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe 
Wrapt deluge round it like a cloke, and they 
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished ; or some God 
Whose throne was in a comet, past, and cried, 
Be not ! And like my words they were no more. 

THE EAETH. 

The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness ! 

The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, 

The vaporous exultation not to be confined ! 
Ha ! ha ! the animation of delight 
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, 

And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind. 

THE MOON. 

Brother mine, calm wanderer, 

Happy globe of land and air, 
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee, 

Which penetrates my frozen frame, 

And passes with the warmth of flame, 
With love, and odour, and deep melody 

Through me, through me ! 

THE EARTH. 

Ha ! ha ! the caverns of my hollow mountains, 
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains, 
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter. 
The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses, 
And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses, 
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing 
after. 

They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse, 
Who all our green and azure universe 
Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruc- 
tion, sending 
A solid cloud to rain hot thunder-stones, 
And splinter and knead down my children's bones, 
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and 
blending. 

Until each crag-like tower, and storied column, 
Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn, 

My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and 
snow, and fire ; 
My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom 
Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom, 

Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire. 

How art thou sunk,withdrawn, covered, drunk up 
By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup 

Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all ; 
And from beneath, around, within, above, 
Filling thy void annihilation, love [ball. 

Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder- 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



123 



THE MOON. 

The snow upon my lifeless mountains 

Is loosened into living fountains, 
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine : 

A spirit from my heart bursts forth, 

It clothes with unexpected birth 
My cold bare bosom : Oh ! it must be thine 
On mine, on mine ! 

Gazing on thee I feel, I know, 

Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, 
And living shapes upon my bosom move : 

Music is in the sea and air, 

Winged clouds soar here and there, 
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of : 
'Tis love, all love ! 

THE EARTH. 

It interpenetrates my granite mass, 

Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass, 

Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers ; 
Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread, 
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead, [bowers. 

They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest 

And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison 
With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen 
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being : 
With earthquake shock and swiftness making 

shiver 
Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever, 
Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished 
shadows, fleeing, 

Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror, 
Which could distort to many a shape of error, 

This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love; 
Which over all his kind, as the sun's heaven 
Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even 

Darting from starry depths radiance and light, 
doth move, 

Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left, 
Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft 

Of rocks, through which the might of healing 
springs is poured ; 
Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, 
Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile 

It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored. 

Man, oh, not men ! a chain of linked thought, 
Of love and might to be divided not, 

Compelling the elements with adamantine stress ; 
As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze, 
The unquiet republic of the maze [wilderness. 

Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free 

Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, 

Whose nature is its own divine control, 
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea ; 

Familiar acts are beautiful through love ; 

Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove 
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they 
could be ! 

His will, with all mean passions, bad delights, 
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites, 
A. spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey, 

Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm [whelm, 
Love rules, through waves which dare not over- 
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway. 



All things confess his strength. Through the cold 
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass; [mass 
Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes 
their children wear ; 
Language is a perpetual Orphic song, 
Which rules with Diedal harmony a throng 
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and 
shapeless were. 

The lightning is his slave ; heaven's utmost deep 

Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep 
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on ! 

The tempest is his steed, he strides the air ; 

And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, 
Heaven, hast thou secrets ? Man unveils me ; 1 
have none. 

THE MOON. 

The shadow of white death has past 

From my path in heaven at last, 
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep ; 

And through my newly-woven bowers, 

Wander happy paramours, 
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep 
Thy vales more deep. 

THE EARTH. 

As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold 
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold, 

And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist, 
And wanders up the vault of the blue day, 
Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray 

Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst. 

THE MOON. 

Thou art folded, thou art lying 

In the light which is undying 
Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine ; 

All suns and constellations shower 

On thee a light, a life, a power 
Which doth array thy sphere ; thou pourest thine 
On mine, on mine ! 

THE EARTH. 

I spin beneath my pyramid of night, 

Which points into the heavens dreaming delight, 

Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep ; 
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing, 
Under the shadow of his beauty lying, 

Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth 
doth keep. 

THE MOON. 

As in the soft and sweet eclipse, 

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, 
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull; 

So, when thy shadow falls on me, 

Then am I mute and still, by thee 
Covered ; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, 
Full, oh, too full ! 

Thou art speeding round the sun, 
Brightest world of many a one ; 
Green and azure sphere which shinest 
With a light which is divinest 
Among all the lamps of Heaven 
To whom life and light is given ; 
I, thy crystal paramour, 
Borne beside thee by a power 
Like the polar Paradise, 
Magnet-like, of lovers' eyes, 



1*24 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



I, ■ most enamoured maiden, 

Whoso weak brain is overladen 

With tho pleasure of her love, 
Maniac-like around thee move 

Qg, an insatiato bride, 

On thy Form from every side, 

Liko a Maenad, round the cup 

Which Agave lifted up 

In the weird Gadmsaan forest. 

Brother, whereaoe'er thou soarest 

1 must hurry, whirl and follow 

Through the heavens wide and hollow. 

Sheltered by the warm embrace 

Of thy soul from hungry space, 

Drinking from thy sense and sight 

Beauty, majesty, and might, 

A> a lover or camelcon 

Grows like what it looks upon, 

As a violet's gentle eye 

(Jazes on the azure sky 
Until its hue grows like what it beholds, 

As a grey and watery mist 

Glows like solid amethyst 
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds 

When the sunset sleeps 
Upon its snow. 

THE EARTH. 

And the weak day weeps 
That it should be so. 
O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight 
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light 
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night 

Through isles for ever calm ; 
gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce 
The caverns of my pride's deep universe, 
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce 

Made wounds which need thy balm. 

PANTHEA. 

I rise as from a bath of sparkling water, 
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks, 
Out of the stream of sound. 

IONE. 

Ah me ! sweet sister, 
The stream of sound has ebbed away from us, 
And you pretend to rise out of its wave, 
Because your words fall like the clear soft dew 
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and 
hair. 

PANTHEA. 

Peace, peace! a mighty Power, which is as darkness, 
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky 
Is showered like night, and from within the air 
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up 
Into the pores of sunlight : the bright visions, 
"Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone, 
Gleam like pale meteors tlirough a watery night. 



There is a sense of words upon mine ear. 

PANTHEA. 

A universal sound like words : Oh, list ! 

DEMOGORGON. 

Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul, 
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies, 

Beautiful orb ! gathering as thou dost roll 

The love which paves thy path along the skies : 



I hoar : 



THE EARTH. 

am as a drop of dew that dies. 



DEMOGORGON. 

Thou Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth 
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee ; 

Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth 
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony : 

THE MOON. 

1 hear : I am a leaf shaken by thee ! 

DEMOGORGON. 

Ye kings of suns and stars ! Daemons and Gods, 
iEtherial Dominations ! who possess 

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes 

Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness : 

A. VOICE FROM ABOVE. 

Our great Republic hears ; we are blest, and bless. 

DEMOGORGON. 

Ye happy dead ! whom beams of brightest verse 
Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray, 

Whether your nature is that universe 
Which once ye saw and suffered — 

A VOICE FROM BENEATH. 

Or as they 
Whom we have left, we change and pass away. 

DEMOGORGON. 

Ye elemental Genii, who have homes 

From man's high mind even to the central stone 
Of sullen lead ; from Heaven's star-fretted domes 

To the dull weed some sea- worm battens on : 

A CONFUSED VOICE. 

We hear * thy words waken Oblivion. 

DEMOGORGON. 

Spirits! whose homes are flesh: ye beasts and birds, 
Ye worms and fish ; ye living leaves and buds ; 

Lightning and wind ; and ye untameable herds, 
Meteoi's and mists, which throng air's solitudes. 

A VOICE. 

Thy voice to us is wind among still woods. 

DEMOGORGON. 

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave ; 

A dupe and a deceiver ; a decay ; 
A traveller from the cradle to the grave 

Through the dim night of this immortal day : 



Speak ! thy strong words may never pass away. 

DEMOGORGON. 

This the day, which down the void abysm 
At the Earth-bom's spell yawns for Heaven's des- 
potism, 

And Conquest is dragged captive through the 
deep ; 
Love, from its awful throne of patient power 
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour 

Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, 
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 
And folds over the world its healing wings. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



12ft 



Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, 
These are the seals of that most firm assurance 

Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength; 
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 
Mother of many acts and hours, should free 

The serpent that would clasp her with his 
length, 
These are the spells by which to re-assume 
An empire o'er the disentangled doom. 



To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite ; 
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; 

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; 
To love, and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates : 

Neither to change, nor faulter, nor repent ; 
This, like thy glory, Titan ! is to be 
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free ; 
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory ! 



NOTE ON THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



BY THE EDITOR 



On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted 
England, never to return. His principal motive 
was the hope that his health would be improved by 
a milder climate ; he suffered very much during 
the winter previous to his emigration, and this 
decided his vacillating purpose. In December, 
1817, he had written from Marlow to a friend, 
saying : — 

" My health has been materially worse. My 
feelings at intervals are of a deadly and torpid 
kind, or awakened to such a state of unnatural and 
keen excitement, that only to instance the organ 
of sight, I find the very blades of grass and the 
boughs of distant trees present themselves to me 
with microscopic distinctness. Towards evening I 
sink into a state of lethargy and inanimation, and 
often remain for hours on the sofa between sleep 
and waking, a prey to the most painful irritability 
of thought. Such, with little intermission, is my 
condition. The hours devoted to study are 
selected with vigilant caution from among these 
periods of endurance. It is not for this that I 
think of travelling to Italy, even if I knew that 
Italy would relieve me. But I have experienced a 
decisive pulmonary attack, and although at present 
it has passed away without any considerable vestige 
of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows 
the true nature of my disease to be consumptive. 
It is to my advantage that this malady is in its 
nature slow, and, if one is sufficiently alive to its 
advances, is susceptible of cure from a warm 
climate. In the event of its assuming any decided 
shape, it would be my duty to go to Italy without 
delay. It is not mere health, but life, that I 
should seek, and that not for my own sake ; I feel 



I am capable of trampling on all such weakness — 
but for the sake of those to whom my life may be 
a source of happiness, utility, security, and honour 
— and to some of whom my death might be all that 
is the reverse." 

In almost every respect his journey to Italy was 
advantageous. He left behind friends to whom he 
was attached, but cares of a thousand kinds, many 
springing from his lavish generosity, crowded 
round him in his native country : and, except the 
society of one or two friends, he had no compen- 
sation. The climate caused him to consume half 
his existence in helpless suffering. His dearest 
pleasure, the free enjoyment of the scenes of nature, 
was marred by the same circumstance. 

He went direct to Italy, avoiding even Paris, 
and did not make any pause till he arrived at 
Milan. The first aspect of Italy enchanted 
Shelley ; it seemed a garden of delight placed 
beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he 
had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive 
letters during the first year of his residence in 
Italy, which, as compositions, are the most beau- 
tiful in the world, and show how truly he appre- 
ciated and studied the wonders of nature and art 
in that divine land. 

The poetical spirit within him speedily revived 
with all the power and with more than all the 
beauty of his first attempts. He meditated three 
subjects as the groundwork for lyrical Dramas. 
One was the story of Tasso ; of this a slight frag- 
ment of a song of Tasso remains. The other was 
one founded on the book of Job, which he never 
abandoned in idea, but of which no trace remains 
among his papers. The third was the "Prometheus 



126 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



Unbound " The Greek tragedians wore now his 
most familiar companions in his wanderings, and 
the sublime majesty of JEschylus tilled him with 
wonder and delight. The father of Greek tragedy 
does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the 
variety and tenderness of Euripides ; the interest 
on which lie founds his dramas is often elevated 
above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions 
and throes of gods and demigods — such fascinated 
the abstract imagination of Shelley. 

We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake 
of Como during that interval. Thence we passed 
in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, 
Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to 
Rome, whither we returned early in March 1819. 
During all this time Shelley meditated the subject 
of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other 
poems were composed during this interval, and 
while at the Bagni di Lucca he translated Plato's 
Symposium. But though he diversified Ins studies, 
his thoughts centred in the " Prometheus." At 
last, when at Rome, during a bright and beautiful 
spring, he gave up his whole time to the compo- 
sition. The spot selected for his study was, as he 
mentions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of 
the Baths of Caracalla. These are little known to the 
ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in 
a letter, with that poetry, and delicacy, and truth 
of description, which render his narrated im- 
pressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and 
interest. 

At first he completed the drama in three acts. 
It was not till several months after, when at 
Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a 
sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the 
prophecies with regard to Prometheus, ought to be 
added to complete the composition. 

The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of 
tne destiny of the human species was, that evil is 
not inherent in the system of the creation, but an 
accident that might be expelled. This also forms 
a portion of Christianity ; God made earth and 
man perfect, till he, by his fall, 

" Brought death into the world and all our woe" 

Shelley believed that mankind had only to will 
that there should be no evil, and there would be 
none. It is not my part in these notes to notice 
the arguments that have been urged against this 
opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained 
it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent 
enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized 
as to be able tc expel evil from his own nature, 
and from the greater part of the creation, was the 
cardinal point of his system. And the subject he 



Loved best to dwell on, was the image of One 
warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not 
only by it, but by all, even the good, who were 
deluded into considering evil a necessary portion 
of humanity. A victim full of fortitude and hope, 
and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance 
in the ultimate omnipotence of good. Such he had 
depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the 
enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took a 
more idealized image of the same subject. He 
followed certain classical authorities in figuring 
Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping 
evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, 
unable to bring mankind back to primitive inno- 
cence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, 
by leading mankind beyond the state wherein they 
are sinless through ignorance, to that in which 
they are virtuous through wisdom. Jupiter 
punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him 
to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to 
devour his still renewed heart. There was a pro- 
phecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, 
the secret of averting which was known only to 
Prometheus ; and the god offered freedom from 
torture on condition of its being communicated to 
him. According to the mythological story, this 
referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was des- 
tined to be greater than his father. Prometheus 
at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching 
mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. 
Hercules killed the vulture and set him free, 
and Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of 
Achilles. 

Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to 
his peculiar views. The son, greater than his 
father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis, 
was to dethrone Evil, and bring back a happier 
reign than that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the 
power of his enemy, and endures centuries of 
torture, till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to 
the real event, but darkly guessing that some great 
good to himself will flow, espouses Thetis. At the 
moment, the Primal Power of the world drives 
him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the 
person of Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified 
in Prometheus, from the tortures generated by 
evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the Oceanides, 
is the wife of Prometheus — she was, according to 
other mythological interpretations, the same as 
Venus and N.Xture. When the Benefactor of 
Mankind is libeiated, Nature resumes the beauty 
of her prime, and ( is united to her husband, the 
emblem of the hui^an race, in perfect and happy 
union. In the Fourth Act, the Poet gives further 
scope to his imagination, and idealizes the forms 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



127 



of creation, such as we know them, instead of such 
as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, 
the mighty Parent, is superseded by the Spirit of 
the Earth — the guide of our Planet through the 
realms of sky — while his fair and weaker com- 
panion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, 
receives bliss from the annihilation of Evil in the 
superior sphere. 

Shelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics 
of this drama, his abstruse and imaginative theories 
with regard to the Creation. It requires a mind 
as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand 
the mystic meanings scattered throughout the 
poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their 
abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they 
are far from vague. It was his design to write 
prose metaphysical essays on the nature of Man, 
which would have served to explain much of what 
is obscure in his poetry ; a few scattered frag- 
ments of observations and remarks alone remain . 
He considered these philosophical views of mind 
and nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit 
of poetry. 

More popular poets clothe the ideal with 
familiar and sensible imagery. Shelley loved to 
idealize the real — to gift the mechanism of the 
material universe with a soul and a voice, and to 
bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract 
emotions and thoughts of the mind. Sophocles 
was his great master in this species of imagery. 

I find in one of his manuscript books some 
remarks on a line in the OEdipus Tyrannus, which 
shows at once the critical subtlety of Shelley's 
mind, and explains his apprehension of those 
" minute and remote distinctions of feeling, 
whether relative to external nature or the living 
beings which surround us," which he pronounces, 
in the letter quoted in the note to the Revolt 
of Islam, to comprehend all that is sublime in 
man. 

" In the Greek Shakspeare, Sophocles, we find 
the image, 

UoWas 8' 68ovs 4\96vTa (ppovritios irXavois. 

A line of almost unfathomable depth of poetry, 
yet how simple are the images in which it is 
arrayed, 

Coming to many ways in the wanderings of careful 
thought. 

If the words oTiovs and trxdvois had not been used, 
the hue might have been explained in a metapho- 
rical, instead of an absolute sense, as we say ' ways 
and means,' and wanderings, for error and con- 
fusion ; but they meant literally paths or roads, 



such as we tread with our feet ; and wanderings, 
such as a man makes when he loses himself in a 
desert, or roams from city to city, as OZdipus, the 
speaker of this verse, was destined to wander, 
blind and asking charity. What a picture does this 
line suggest of the mind as a wilderness of intricate j 
paths, wide as the universe, which is here made 
its symbol, a world within a world, which he, who 
seeks some knowledge with respect to what he 
ought to do, searches throughout, as he would 
search the external universe for some valued 
thing which was hidden from him upon its sur- 
face." 

In reading Shelley's poetry, we often find similar 
verses, resembling, but not imitating, the Greek 
in this species of imagery ; for though he adopted 
the style, he gifted it with that originality of 
form and colouring which sprung from his own 
genius. 

In the Prometheus Unbound, Shelley fulfils the 
promise quoted from a letter in the Note on the 
Revolt of Islam *. 

The tone of the composition is calmer and more 
majestic, the poetry more perfect as a whole, and 
the imagination displayed at once more pleasingly 
beautiful and more varied and daring. The de- 
scription of the Hours, as they are seen in the cave 
of Demogorgon, is an instance of this — it fills the 
mind as the most charming picture — we long to 
see an artist at work to bring to our view the 

cars drawn hy rainbow-winged steeds, 
Which trample the dim winds : in each there stands 
A wild-eyed charioteer, urging their flight. 
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, 
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars : 
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink 
With eager lips the wind of their own speed, 
As if the thing they loved fled on before, 
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks 
Stream like a comet's flashing hair : they all 
Sweep onward. 

Through the whole Poem there reigns a sort 
of calm and holy spirit of love ; it soothes the 
tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the 

* While correcting the proof-sheets of that Poem, it 
struck me that the Poet had indulged in an exaggerated 
view of the evils of restored despotism, which, however 
injurious and degrading, were less openly sanguinary than 
the triumph of anarchy, such as it appeared in France 
at the close of the last century. But at this time a book, 
" Scenes of Spanish Life," translated by Lieutenant Craw- 
ford from the German of Dr. Huber, of Rostock, fell into my 
hands. The account of the triumph of the priests and the 
serviles, after the French invasion of Spain in 1823, bears 
a strong and frightful resemblance to some of the descrip- 
tions of the massacre of the patriots in tbe Revolt of 
Islam. 






EDITOR'S NOTE ON PKOMKTHEUS UNBOUND. 



pro] heey is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any 

evil, beoomee the law of the world. 

England had boon rendered a painful residence 
to Shelley, as much by the sort of persecution with 
which in those days all men of liberal opinions 
were visited, and by the injustice he had lately 
endured in the Court of Chancery, as by the symp- 
toms of disease which made him regard a visit to 
Italy as necessary to prolong his life. An exile, 
and strongly impressed with the feeling that the 
majority of his countrymen regarded him with sen- 
timents of aversion, such as his own heart could 
experience towards none, he sheltered himself from 
such disgusting and painful thoughts in the calm 
retreats of poetry, and built up a world of his own, 
with the more pleasure, since he hoped to induce 
some one or two to believe that the earth might 
become such, did mankind themselves consent. 
The charm of the Roman climate helped to clothe 
his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever 



worn before. And as he wandered among the 
ruins, made one with nature in their decay, or 
gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the 
Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his 
soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a 
portion of itself. There are many passages in the 
" Prometheus" which show the intense delight he 
received from such studies, and give back the im- 
pression with a beauty of poetical description pecu- 
liarly his own. He felt this, as a poet must feel when 
he satisfies himself by the result of his labours, and 
he wrote from Rome, " My Prometheus Unbound 
is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send 
it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism 
of a kind yet unattempted, and I think the execu- 
tion is better than any of my former attempts." 

I may mention, for the information of the more 
critical reader, that the verbal alterations in this 
edition of Prometheus are made from a list of 
errata, written by Shelley himself. 



END OF PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



THE CENCI; 

IN FIVE ACTS. 



DEDICATION. 



TO LEIGH HUNT, ESO,. 

My dear Friend, 
I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, 
and after an absence whose months have seemed years, 
this the latest of my literary efforts. 

Those writings which I have hitherto published, 
have been little else than visions which impersonate 
my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. 
I can also perceive in them the literary defects inci- 
dental to youth and impatience ; they are dreams of 
what ought to be, or may be. The drama which I 
now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the 
presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content 
to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, 
that which has been. 

Had I known a person more highly endowed than 
yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I 
had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. 
One more gentle, honourable, innocent and brave ; one 
of more exalted toleration for all who do and think 
evil, and yet himself more free from evil ; one who 
knows better how to receive, and how to confer a 
benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he 
can receive ; one of simpler, and, in the highest 
sense of the word, of purer life and manners, I never 
knew ; and I had already been fortunate in friendships 
when your name was added to the list. 

In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with 
domestic and political tyranny and imposture which 
the tenor of your life has illustrated, and which, had I 
health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, com- 
forting each other in our task, live and die. 

All happiness attend you ! 

Your affectionate friend, 

Percy B. Shelley. 
Rome, May 29, 1319. 



PREFACE. 



A manuscript was communicated to me during my 
travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of 
the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed 
account of the horrors which ended in the extinction 
of one of the noblest and richest families of that city, 
during the pontificate of Clement VIII., in the year 
1599. The story is, that an old man, having spent 
his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at 
length an implacable hatred towards his children ; 
which showed itself towards one daughter under the 
form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every 
circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, 
after long and vain attempts to escape from what she 
considered a perpetual contamination both of body 
and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law 
and brother to murder their common tyrant. The 
young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous 
deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror, was 
evidently a most gentle and amiable being ; a creature 
formed to adorn and he admired, and thus violently 
thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circum- 
stances and opinion. The deed was quickly discovered, 
and in spite of the most earnest prayers made to the 
Pope by the highest persons in Rome, the criminals 
were put to death. The old man had, during his life, 
repeatedly bought his pai'don from the Pope for capital 
crimes of the most enormous and unspeakable kind, 
at the price of a hundred thousand crowns ; the death 
therefore of his victims can scarcely be accounted for 
by the love of justice. The Pope, amoDg other 
motives for severity, probably felt that whoever killed 
the Count Cenci deprived his treasury of a certain 
and copious source of revenue*. Such a story, if told 
so as to present to the reader all the feelings of those 
who once acted it, their hopes and fears, their confi- 
dences and misgivings, their various interests, passions, 
and opinions, acting upon and with each other, yet all 
conspiring to one tremendous end, would be as a light 
to make apparent some of the most dark and secret 
caverns of the human heart. 

On my arrival at Rome, I found that the story of 
the Cenci was a subject not to be mentioned in Italian 
society without awakeninga deepandbrea.hlessinterest; 

* The Papal Government formerly took the most extra- 
ordinary precautions against the publicity of facts which 
offer so tragical a demonstration of its ovm wickedness 
and weakness ; so that the communication of the MS. had 
become, until very lately, a matter of some difficulty. 



130 



THE CENCI. 



and that the feelings of the company never failed to 
incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs, and a 
passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which 
they urged her, who has been mingled two centuries 
with the common dust. All ranks of people knew 
the outlines of this history, and participated in the 
overwhelming interest which it seems to have the 
magic of exciting iu the human heart. I had a copy 
ofGuidos picture of Beatrice, which is preserved in 
the Colonna Palace, and my servant instantly recog- 
nized it as the portrait of La Ccnci. 

This national and universal interest which the story 
produces and has produced for two centuries, and 
among all ranks of people in a great city, where the 
imagination is kept for ever active and awake, first 
suggested to me the conception of its fitness for a 
dramatic purpose. In fact, it is a tragedy which has 
already received, from its capacity of awakening and 
sustaining the sympathy of men, approbation and 
success. Nothing remained, as I imagined, but to 
clothe it to the apprehensions of my countrymen in 
such language and action as would bring it home to 
their hearts. The deepest and the sublimest tragic 
compositions, King Lear, and the two plays in which 
the tale of GEdipus is told, were stories which already 
existed in tradition, as matters of popular belief and 
interest, before Shakspeare and Sophocles made them 
familiar to the sympathy of all succeeding generations 
of mankind. 

This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful 
and monstrous : anything like a dry exhibition of it 
on the stage would be insupportable. The person 
who would treat such a subject must increase the 
ideal, and diminish the actual horror of the events, so 
that the pleasure which arises from the poetry which 
exists in these tempestuous sufferings and crimes, 
may mitigate the pain of the contemplation of the 
moral deformity from which they spring. There 
must also be nothing attempted to make the exhibition 
subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral pur- 
pose. The highest moral purpose aimed at in the 
highest species of the drama, is the teaching of the 
human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, 
the knowledge of itself ; in proportion to the possession 
of which knowledge every human being is wise, just, 
sincere, tolerant, and kind. If dogmas can do more, 
it is well : but a drama is no fit place for the enforce- 
ment of them. Undoubtedly no person can be truly 
dishonoured by the act of another ; and the fit return 
to make to the most enormous injuries is kindness 
and forbearance, and a resolution to convert the injurer 
from his dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, 
retaliation, atonement, are pernicious mistakes. If 
Beatrice had thought in this manner, she would have 
been wiser and better; but she would never have been 
a tragic character : the few whom such an exhibition 
would have interested, could never have been suffi- 
ciently interested for a dramatic purpose, from the 
want of finding sympathy in their interest among the 
mass who surround them. It is in the restless and 
anatomising casuistry with which men seek the justi- 
fication of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what 
needs justification ; it is in the superstitious horror 
with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and 
their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she 
did and suffered consists. 

1 have endeavoured as nearly as possible to represent 
the characters as they probably were, and have sought 
to avoid the error of making them actuated by my 
own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true : thus 



under a thin veil converting names and actions of the 
sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own 
mind. They are represented as Catholics, and as 
Catholics deeply tinged with religion. To a Protestant 
apprehension there will appear something unnatural 
in the earnest and perpetual sentiment of the relations 
between God and man which pervade the tragedy of 
the Cenci. It will especially be startled at the com- 
bination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of 
the popular religion, with a cool and determined per- 
severance in enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is 
not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on 
particular days ; or a passport which those who do not 
wish to be railed at carry with them to exhibit ; or a 
gloomy passion for penetrating the impenetrable mys- 
teries of our being, which terrifies its possessor at the 
darkness of the abyss to the brink of which it has 
conducted him. Religion co-exists, as it were, in the 
mind of an Italian Catholic with a faith in that of 
which all men have the most certain knowledge. It 
is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is 
adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admi- 
ration ; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no 
necessary connection with any one virtue. The most 
atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and, without 
any shock to established faith, confess himself to be 
so. Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of 
society, and is, according to the temper of the mind 
which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, 
a refuge ; never a check. Cenci himself built a chapel 
in the court of his palace, and dedicated it to St. 
Thomas the Apostle, and established masses for the 
peace of his soul. Thus in the first scene of the 
fourth act, Lucretia's design in exposing herself to the 
consequences of an expostulation with Cenci after 
having administered the opiate, was to induce him by 
a feigned tale to confess himself before death; this 
being esteemed by Catholics as essential to salvation ; 
and she only relinquishes her purpose when she per- 
ceives that her perseverance would expose Beatrice to 
new outrages. 

I have avoided with great care in writing this play 
the introduction of what is commonly called mere 
poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely, be found a 
detached simile or a single isolated description, unless 
Beatrice's description of the chasm appointed for her 
father's murder should be judged to be of that 
nature*. 

In a dramatic composition the imagery and the 
passion should interpenetrate one another, the former 
being reserved simply for the full development and 
illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the im- 
mortal God which should assume flesh for the redemp- 
tion of mortal passion. It is thus that the most 
remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be 
fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the illus- 
tration of strong feeling, which raises what is low, and 
levels to the apprehension that which is lofty, casting 
over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other 
respects I have written more carelessly; that is, without 
an overfastidious and learned choice of words. In 
this respect, I entirely agree with those modern critics 
who assert, that in order to move men to true sympathy 
we must use the familiar language of men; and that 
our great ancestors, the ancient English poets, are the 
writers, a study of whom might incite us to do that 

* An idea in this speech was suggested by a most 
sublime passage in "El Purgatorio de San Patricio," of 
Calderon : the only plagiarism which I have intentionally 
committed in the whole piece. 



THE CENCI. 



131 



for our own age which they have done for theirs. 
But it must be the real language of men in general, 
and not that of any particular class, to whoBe society 
the writer happens to belong. So much for what I 
have attempted : I need not be assured that success 
is a very different matter ; particularly for one whose 
attention has but newly been awakened to the study 
of dramatic literature. 

I endeavoured whilst at Rome to observe such 
monuments of this story as might be accessible to a 
stranger. The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna 
Palace is most admirable as a work of art: it was 
taken by Guido during her confinement in prison. 
But it is most interesting as a just representation of 
one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of 
Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon 
the features : she seems sad and stricken down in 
spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by 
the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with 
folds of white drapery, from which the yellow strings 
of her golden hair escape and fall about her neck. 
The moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the 
eye-brows are distinct and arched ; the lips have that 
permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility 
which suffering has not repressed, and which it seems 
as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her forehead is 
large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were 
remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping 
and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In 
the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity 



which, united with her exquisite loveliness and deep 
sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci 
appears to have been one of those rare persons in 
whom energy and gentleness dwell together without 
destroying one another : her nature was simple and 
profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was 
an actor and a sufferer, are as the mask and the 
mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her 
impersonation on the scene of the world. 

The Cenci Palace is of great extent ; and, though in 
part modernised, there yet remains a vast and gloomy 
pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during 
the dreadful ucenes which are the subject of this tia- 
gedy. The palace is situated in an obscure corner of 
Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the 
upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount 
Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth 
of trees. There is a court in one part of the palace 
(perhaps that in which Cenci built the chapel to St. 
Thomas), supported by granite columns and adorned 
with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built 
up, according to the ancient Italian fashion, with 
balcony over balcony of open work. One of the gates 
of the palace, formed of immense stones, and leading 
through a passage dark and lofty, and opening into 
gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particu- 
larly. 

Of the Castle of Petrella, I could obtain no further 
information than that which is to be found iD the 
manuscript. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 



Count Francesco Cenci 
Giacomo, J 

Bernardo, ) 
Cardinal Camlllo 



his Sons. 



Orsino, a Prelate. 
Savella, the Pope's Legate. 
Olimpio, 
MARzro, 



Assassins. 



Andrea, Servant to Cenci. 
Nobles, Judges, Guards, Servants. 



Lucretia, Wife of Cenci, and step-mother of his children. 
Beatrice, his Daughter. 



The Scene lies principally in Rome, but changes du,ring the Fourth Act to Petrella, a Castle among the 

Apulian Apennines. 
Time. — During the Pontificate of Clement VIII. 



ACT I. 



SCENE I. 

An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. 

Enter Count Cenci and Cardinal Camillo. 

CAMILLO. 

That matter of the murder is hushed up 

If you consent to yield his Holiness 

Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate. — 

It needed all my interest in the conclave 

To bend him to this point : he said that you 

Bought perilous impunity with your gold ; 

That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded 

Enriched the Church, and respited from hell 

An erring soul which might repent and live : 



But that the glory and the interest 

Of the high throne he fills, little consist 

With making it a daily mart of guilt 

So manifold and hideous as the deeds 

Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes 

CENCI. 

The third of my possessions — let it go ! 

Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope 

Had sent his architect to view the ground, 

Meaning to build a villa on my vines 

The next time I compounded with his uncle : 

I little thought he should outwit me so ! 

Henceforth no witness — not the lamp — shall see 






THE CENCI. 



T h it which the \.i<sal threatened to divulge, 
Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward. 
The deed he saw could not have rated higher 

Than his most worthless life :— it angers ine ! 
Respited from Hell ! — So may the Devil 
Respite their souls from Heaven. No doubt Pope 
And his most charitable nephews, pray [Clement, 
That the Apostle Peter and the saints 
Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy 
Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of 

days 
Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards 
Of their revenue. — But much yet remains 
To which they show no title. 

CAMILLO. 

Oh, Count Cenci ! 
So much that thou might'st honourably live, 
And reconcile thyself with thine own heart 
And with thy God, and with the offended world. 
How hideously look deeds of lust and blood 
Through those snow-white and venerable hairs ! 
Your children should be sitting round you now, 
But that you fear to read upon their looks 
The shame and misery you have written there. 
Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter? 
Methinkshersweet looks, which make all things else , 
Beauteous aud glad, might kill the fiend within you. 
Why is she barred from all society 
But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs ? 
Talk with me, Count, you know I mean you well. 
I stood beside your dark and fiery youth, 
Watching its bold and bad career, as men 
Watch meteors, but it vanished not — I marked 
Your desperate and remorseless manhood ; now 
Do I behold you, in dishonoured age, 
Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes. 
Yet I have ever hoped you would amend, 
And in that hope have saved your life three times. 

CENCI. 

For- which Aldobrandino owes you now 
My fief beyond the Pincian — Cardinal, 
One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth, 
And so we shall converse with less restraint. 
A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter, 
He was accustomed to frequent my house ; 
So the next day his wife and daughter came 
And asked if I had seen him ; and I smiled : 
I think they never saw him any more. 

CAMILLO. 

Thou execrable man, beware ! — 

CENCI. 

Of thee ? 
Nay, this is idle : — We should know each other. 
As to my character for what men call crime, 
Seeing I please my senses as I list, 
And vindicate that right with force or guile, 
It is a public matter, and I care not 
If I discuss it with you. I may speak 
Alike to you and my own conscious heart ; 
For you give out that you have half reformed me, 
Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent 
If fear should not ; both will, I do not doubt. 
All men delight in sensual luxury, 
All men enjoy revenge ; and most exult 
Over the tortures they can never feel ; 
Flattering their secret peace with others' pain. 
But I delight in nothing else. I love 



The sight of agony, and the sense of joy, 
When this shall he another's, and thai mine. 
And I have no remorse, and little fear, 
Which are, 1 think, the checks of other men. 
This mood has grown upon me, until now 
Any design my captious fancy makes 
The picture of its wish, and it forms none 
But such as men like you would start to know. 
Is as my natural food and rest debarred 
Until it be accomplished. 

CAMILLO. 

Art thou not 
Most miserable ? 

CENCI. 

Why miserable ? — 
No. I am what your theologians call 
Hardened ; which they must be in impudence, 
So to revile a man's peculiar taste. 
True, I was happier than I am, while yet 
Manhood remained to act the thing I thought ; 
While lust was sweeter than revenge ; and now 
Invention palls ; ay, we must all grow old : 
But that there yet remains a deed to act 
Whose horror might make sharp an appetite 
Duller than mine — I'd do, — I know not what. 
When I was young I thought of nothing else 
But pleasure ; and I fed on honey sweets : 
Men, by St. Thomas ! cannot live like bees, 
And I grew tired : yet, till I killed a foe, [groans, 
And heard his groans, and heard his children'? 
Knew I not what delight was else on earth, 
Which now delights me little. I the rather 
Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals ; 
The dry, fixed eye-ball ; the pale, quivering lip, 
Winch tell me that the spirit weeps within 
Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ. 
I rarely kill the body, which preserves, 
Like a strong prison, the soul within my power, 
Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear 
For hourly pain. 

CAMILLO. 

Hell's most abandoned fiend 
Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt, 
Speak to his heart as now r you speak to me ; 
I thank my God that I believe you not. 

Enter Andrea. 
ANDREA. 

My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca 
Would speak with you. 

CENCI. 

Bid him attend me in the grand saloon. 

[Exit ANDRK4. 
CAMILLO. 

Farewell ; and I will pray 

Almighty God that thy false, impious words 

Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee. 

[Exit Camillo 
CENCI. 
The third of my possessions ! I must use 
Close husbandry, or gold, the old man's sword, 
Falls from my withered hand. But yesterday 
There came an order from the Pope to make 
Fourfold provision for my cursed sons ; 
Whom I Jiave sent from Rome to Salamanca, 
Hoping some accident might cut them off ; 
And meaning, if I could, to starve them there. 
I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them ! 



THE CENCJ. 



33 



Bernardo and my wife could not be worse 
If dead and damned : — then, as to Beatrice — 

[Looking around him tutpicioutlp, 
I think they cannot hear me at that door ; 
What if they should? And yet I need not speak, 
Though the heart triumphs with itself in words. 
O, thou most silent air, that shall not hear 
What now I think ! Thou, pavement, which I tread 
Towards her chamber, — let your echoes talk 
Of my imperious step, scorning surprise, 
But not of my intent ! — Andrea ! 

Enter Andiika. 
ANDREA. 

My lord ! 

CENCI. 

Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber 
This eveniug : — no, at midnight, and alone. 

[Exeunt. 



SCENE II. 

A Garden of the Cenci Palace. 

Enter Beatrice and Orsino, as in conversation. 

BEATRICE. 

Pervert not truth, 

Orsino. You remember where we held 

That conversation ; — nay, we see the spot 

Even from this cypress ; — two long years are past 

Since, on an April midnight, underneath 

The moon-light ruins of Mount Palatine, 

I did confess to you my secret mind. 



ORSINO. 

You said you loved me then. 



BEATRICE. 



Speak to me not of love. 



You are a priest 



I may obtain 
The dispensation of the Pope to marry. 
Because I am a priest, do you believe 
Your image, as the hunter some struck deer, 
Follows me not whether I wake or sleep ? 

BEATRICE. 

As I have said, speak to me not of love ; 

Had you a dispensation, I have not ; 

Nor will I leave this home of misery 

Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady 

To whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts, 

Must suffer what I still have strength to share. 

Alas, Orsino ! All the love that once 

I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain. 

Ours was a youthful contract, which you first 

Broke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose. 

A.nd thus I love you still, but holily. 

Even as a sister or a spirit might ; 

And so I swear a cold fidelity. 

And it is well perhaps we shall not marry. 

You have a sly, equivocating vein 

That suits me not. — Ah, wretched that I am ! 

Where shall I turn ? Even now you look on me 

As you were not my friend, and as if you 

Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles 

Making my trui suspicion seem your wrong. 

Ah ! Xo, forgive mt ; sorrow makes me seem 



Sterner than else my nature might have been ; 
I have a weight of melancholy thoughts, 
And they forebode, — but what can they forebode 
Worse than I now endure \ 

ORSINO. 

All will be well. 
Is the petition yet prepared ? You know 
My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice ; 
Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill 
So that the Pope attend to your complaint. 

BEATRICE. 

Your zeal for all I wish ? — Ah me, you are cold ! 
Your utmost skill — speak but one word — 

{Aside.) Alas ! 
Weak and deserted creature that I am, 
Hero 1 stand bickering with my only friend ! 

{To Orsino.) 
This night my father gives a sumptuous feast, 
Orsino ; he has heard some happy news 
From Salamanca, from my brothers there, 
And with this outward show of love he mocks 
His inward hate. 'Tis bold hypocrisy, 
For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths, 
Which I have heard him pray for on his knees • 
Great God ! that such a father should be mine ! — 
But there is mighty preparation made, 
And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there, 
And all the chief nobility of Rome. 
And he has bidden me and my pale mother 
Attire ourselves in festival array. 
Poor lady ! She expects some happy change 
In his dark spirit from this act ; I none. 
At supper I will give you the petition : 
Till when — farewell. 

orsino. 
Farewell. 

[Exit Bkatricb. 
I know the Pope 
Will ne'er absolve me from my priestly vow 
But by absolving me from the revenue 
Of many a wealthy see ; and, Beatrice, 
I think to win thee at an easier rate. 
Nor shall he read her elocment petition : 
He might bestow her on some poor relation 
Of his sixth-cousin, as he did her sister, 
And I should be debarred from all access. 
Then as to what she suffers from her father, 
In all this there is much exaggeration : 
Old men are testy, and will have their way ; 
A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal, 
And live a free life as to wine or women, 
And with a peevish temper may return 
To a dull home, and rate his wife and children ; 
Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny. 
I shall be well content, if on my conscience 
There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer 
From the devices of my love — A net 
From which she shall escape not. Yet I fear 
Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze, 
Whose beams anatomise me, nerve by nerve, 
And lay mo bare, and make me blush to see 
My hidden thoughts. — Ah, no ! a friendless girl 
Who clings to me, as to her only hope : — 
1 were a fool, not less than if a panther 
Were panic-stricken by the antelope's eye, 
If she escape me. 

[Exit 



\:u 



TIIK CENCI. 



SCENE III. 

A vittoniticott Hal! in the Cenci Palace. 
A Banquet. Enter Cenci. Lccretia, Bkatricb, Orsino, 

C.VMIl.1,1), NoBLRS. 
CENCI. 

Welcome, my friends and kinsmen ; welcome ye, 

Prinoea and Cardinals, Pillars of the church, 

Whose presence honours our festivity. 

1 have too long lived like an anchorite, 

And, in my absence from your merry meetings, 

An evil word is gone abroad of me ; 

But I do hope that you, my noble friends, 

When you have shared the entertainment here, 

And heard the pious cause for which 'tis given, 

And we have pledged a health or two together, 

Will think me flesh and blood as well as you ; 

Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so, 

But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful. 

FIRST GUEST. 

In truth, my lord, you seem too light of heart, 
Too sprightly and companionable a man, 
To act the deeds that rumour pins on you. 

[To his companion. 
I never saw such blithe and open cheer 
In any eye ! 

SECOND GUEST. 

Some most desired event, 
In which we all demand a common joy, 
Has brought us hither ; let us hear it, Count. 

CENCI. 

It is indeed a most desired event. 
If, when a parent, from a parent's heart, 
Lifts from this earth to the great Father of all 
A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep, 
And when he rises up from dreaming it ; 
One supplication, one desire, one hope, 
That he would grant a wish for his two sons, 
Even all that he demands in their regard — 
And suddenly, beyond his dearest hope, 
It is accomplished, he should then rejoice, 
And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast, 
And task their love to grace his merriment, 
Then honour me thus far — for I am he. 

BEATRICE (to LUCRETIA). 

Great God ! How horrible ! Some dreadful ill 
Must have befallen my brothers. 



He speaks too frankly. 



Fear not, child, 



BEATRICE. 

Ah ! My blood runs cold. 
I fear that wicked laughter round his eye, 
Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair. 



Here are the letters brought from Salamanca ; 

Beatrice, read them to your mother. God, 

I thank thee ! In one night didst thou perform, 

By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought. 

My disobedient and rebellious sons 

Are dead ! — Why dead ! — What means this change 

of cheer ? 
You hear me not, I tell you they are dead ; 
And they will need no food or raiment more : 



The tapers that did light them the dark way 
Are their last cost. The Pope, I think, will not 
Expect I should maintain them in their coffins. 
Rejoice with me — my heart is wondrous glad. 

Beatrice. (Lucretia sinks, half fainting ; 
Beatrice supports her.) 
It is not true ! — Dear lady, pray look up. 
Had it been true, there is a God in Heaven, 
He would not live to boast of such a boon. 
Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false. 

cenci. 
Ay, as the word of God ; whom here I call 
To witness that I speak the sober truth ; — 
And whose most favouring providence was shown 
Even in the manner of their deaths. For Rocco 
Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others, 
When the Church fell and crushed him to a mummy ; 
The rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano 
Was stabbed in error by a jealous man, 
Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival ; 
All in the self-same hour of the same night ; 
Which shows that Heaven has special care of me. 
I beg those friends who love me, that they mark 
The day a feast upon their calendars. 
It was the twenty-seventh of December : 
Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath. 

[The assembly appears confused; several of the 
guests rise. 

FIRST GUEST. 

Oh, horrible ! I will depart. — 

SECOND GUEST. 

And I.— 

THIRD GUEST. 

No, stay ! 
I do believe it is some jest ; though faith, 
'Tis mocking us somewhat too solemnly. 
I think his son has married the Infanta, 
Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado : 
'Tis but to season some such news ; stay, stay ! 
I see 'tis only raillery by his smile. 

cenci (filling a bowl of wine, and lifting it up). 
Oh, thou bright wine, whose purple splendour leaps 
And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl 
Under the lamp-light, as my spirits do, 
To hear the death of my accursed sons ! 
Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood, 
Then would I taste thee like a sacrament, 
And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell ; 
Who, if a father's curses, as men say, 
Climb with swift wings after their children's souls, 
And drag them from the very throne of Heaven, 
Now triumphs in my triumph ! — But thou art 
Superfluous ; 1 have drunken deep of joy, 
And I will taste no other wine to-night. 
Here, Andrea ! Bear the bowl around. 

a guest (rising). 

Thou wretch ! 
Will none among this noble company 
Check the abandoned villain ? 

CAMILLO. 

For God's sake, 
Let me dismiss the guests ! You are insane, 
Some ill will come of this. 

second guest. 

Seize, silence him ! 



THE CENCI. 



i:i6 



will ! 



FIRST GUEST. 



THIRD GUEST. 



And I 



Cenci (addressing those who rise with a threatening 

gesture). 
Who moves ? Who speaks ? 

[Turning to the Company. 
'Tis nothing, 

Enjoy yourselves Beware ! for my revenge 

Is as the sealed commission of a king, 

That kills, and none dare name the murderer. 

[The Banquet is broken up,- several of the Guests 
are departing. 

BEATRICE. 

I do entreat you, go not, noble guests ; 
What although tyranny and impious hate 
Stand sheltered by a father's hoary hair ? 
What if 'tis he who clothed us in these limbs 
Who tortures them, and triumphs ? What, if we, 
The desolate and the dead, were his own flesh, 
His children and his wife, whom he is bound 
To love and shelter ? Shall we therefore find 
No refuge in this merciless wide world ? 
Oh, think what deep wrongs must have blotted out 
First love, then reverence in a child's prone mind, 
Till it thus vanquish shame and fear ! Oh, think ! 
I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand 
Which crushed us to the earth, and thought its 

stroke 
Was perhaps some paternal chastisement ! 
Have excused much, doubted ; and when no doubt 
Remained, have sought by patience, love and tears, 
To soften him ; and when this could not be, 
I have knelt down through the long sleepless nights, 
And lifted up to God, the father of all, 
Passionate prayers : and when these were not heard, 
I have still borne ; — until I meet you here, 
Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous feast 
Given at my brothers' deaths. Two yet remain, 
His wife remains and I, whom if ye save not, 
Ye may soon share such merriment again 
As fathers make over their children's graves. 
Oh ! Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman ; 
Cardinal, thou art the Pope's chamberlain ; 
Camillo, thou art chief justiciary ; 
Take us away ! 

cenci. (He has been conversing with Camillo 
during the first part of Beatrice's speech; he 
hears the conclusion, and now advances.) 

I hope my good friends here 

Will think of their own daughters — or perhaps 

Of their own throats — before they lend an ear 

To this wild girl. 

Beatrice (not noticing the words of Cenci). 
Dare no one look on me ? 
None answer ? Can one tyrant overbear 
The sense of many best and wisest men ? 
Or is it that I sue not in some form 



Of scrupulous law, that ye deny my suit? 
Oil, God ! that I were buried with my brothers ! 
And that the flowers of this departed spring 
Were fading on my grave ! And that my father 
Were celebrating now one feast for all ! 

camillo. 
A bitter wish for one so young and gentle ; 
Can we do nothing ? — 

COLONNA. 

Nothing that I see. 
Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy : 
Yet I would second any one. 

A CARDINAL. 

And I. 

CENCI. 

Retire to your chamber, insolent girl ! 



Retire thou, impious man ! Ay, hide thyself 
Where never eye can look upon thee more ! 
Wouldst thou have honour and obedience, 
Who art a torturer \ Father, never dream, 
Though thou mayst overbear this company, 
But ill must come of ill. — Frown not on me ! 
Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks 
My brothers' ghosts should hunt thee from thy sear! 
Cover thy face from every living eye, 
And start if thou but hear a human step : 
Seek out some dark and silent corner, there, 
Bow thy white head before offended God, 
And we will kneel around, and fervently 
Pray that he pity both ourselves and thee. 

CENCI. 

My friends, I do lament this insane girl 

Has spoilt the mirth of our festivity. 

Good night, farewell ; I will not make you longer 

Spectators of our dull domestic quarrels. 

Another time. — 

[Exeunt all but Cenci and Beatrice. 

My brain is swimming round ; 
Give me a bowl of wine ! 

(To Beatrice.) Thou painted viper ! 
Beast that thou art ! Fair and yet terrible ! 
I know a charm shall make thee meek and tame, 
Now get thee from my sight ! 

[Exit Beatrice. 
Here, Andrea, 
Fill up this goblet with Greek wine. I said 
I would not drink this evening, but I must ; 
For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail 
With thinking what I have decreed to do. 

[Drinking the wine. 
Be thou the resolution of quick youth 
Within my veins, and manhood's purpose stern, 
And age's firm, cold, subtle villany ; 
As if thou wert indeed my children's blood 
Which I did thirst to drink. The charm works 

well ; 
It must be done, it shall be done, I swear ! 

[Exit 



VMi 



THE CENCI. 



ACT II. 



SCENE 1. 

An Apartment in the Ccnci Palace. 
Knlcr LOCRBTLA aiul Hkrvakdo. 
LUCRETIA. 

Weep not, my gentle boy ; he struck but me, 

Who have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if he 
Had killed me, be bad done a kinder deed. 
Oh, God Almighty, do thou look upon us, 
We have no other friend but only thee ! 
Yet weep not ; though I love you as my own, 
I am not your true mother. 

BERNARDO. 

Oh, more, more 
Than ever mother was to any child, 
That have you been to me ! * Had he not been 
My father, do you think that I should weep ? 

LUCRETIA. 

Alas ! poor boy, what else couldst thou have done ! 

Enter Beatrice. 
Beatrice (in a hurried voice). 
Did he pass this way ? Have you seen him, brother ? 
Ah ! no, that is his step upon the stairs ; 
'Tis nearer now ; his hand is on the door ; 
Mother, if I to thee have ever been 
A duteous child, now save me ! Thou, great God, 
Whose image upon earth a father is, 
Dost thou indeed abandon me ? He comes ; 
The door is opening now ; I see his face ; 
He frowns on others, but he smiles on me, 
Even as he did after the feast last night. 

Enter a Servant. 
Almighty God, how merciful thou art ! 
'Tis but Orsino's servant. — Well, what news ? 

servant. 
My master bids me say, the Holy Father 
Has sent back your petition thus unopened. 

{Giving a Paper. 
And he demands at what hour 'twere secure 
To visit you again ? 

LUCRETIA. 

At the Ave Mary. 

[Exit Servant. 
So, daughter, our last hope has failed ; ah me, 
How pale you look ! you tremble, and you stand 
Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation, 
As if one thought were over strong for you : 
Your eyes have a chill glare ; oh, dearest child ! 
Are you gone mad ? If not. pray speak to me. 

BEATRICE. 

You see I am not mad ; I speak to you. 

LUCRETIA. 

You talked of something that your father did 
After that dreadful feast ? Could it be worse 
Than when he smiled, and cried, My sons are dead! 
And every one looked in his neighbour's face 



To see if others were as white as he ? 
At the first word he spoke I felt the blood 
Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance ; 
And when it past I sat all weak and wild ; 
Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong words 
Check'd his unnatural pride ; and I could see 
The devil was rebuked that lives in him. 
Until this hour thus you have ever stood 
Between us and your father's moody wrath 
Like a protecting presence : your firm mind 
Has been our only refuge and defence : 
What can have thus subdued it ? What can now 
Have given you that cold melancholy look, 
Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear ? 

BEATRICE. 

What is it that you say ? I was just thinking 
'Twere better not to struggle any more. 
Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody, 
Yet never — ! before worse comes of it, 
'Twere wise to die : it ends in that at last. 

LUCRETIA. 

Oh, talk not so, dear child ! Tell me at once 
What did your father do or say to you ? 
He stayed not after that accursed feast 
One moment in your chamber. — Speak to me. 

BERNARDO. 

Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us ! 

Beatrice (speaking very slowly with a forced 
calmness). 
It was one word, mother, one little word ; 
One look, one smile. [Wildly. 

Oh ! he has trampled me 
Under his feet, and made the blood stream down 
My pallid cheeks. And he has given us all 
Ditch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh 
Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve, 
And we have eaten. He has made me look 
On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust 
Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs, 
And I have never yet despaired — but now ! 
What would I say ? 

[Recovering herself. 

Ah ! no, 'tis nothing new. 
The sufferings we all share have made me wild : 
He only struck and cursed me as he passed ; 
He said, he looked, he did, — nothing at all 
Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me. 
Alas ! I am forgetful of my duty, 
I should preserve my senses for your sake. 

LUCRETIA. 

Nay, Beatrice ; have courage, my sweet girl. 

If any one despairs it should be I, 

Who loved him once, and now must five with him 

Till God in pity call for him or me. 

For you may, like your sister, find some husband, 

And smile, years hence, with children round your 

knees ; 
Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil, 
Shall be remembered only as a dream. 



THE CENCI. 



13: 



BEATRICE. 

Talk not to me, dear lady, of a husband. 

Did you not nurse me when my mother died ? 

Did you not shield me and that dearest boy ? 

And had we any other friend but you 

In infancy, with gentle words and looks, 

To win our father not to murder us ? 

And shall I now desert you ? May the ghost 

Of my dead mother plead against my soul, 

If I abandon her who filled the place 

She left, with more even than a mother's love ! 

BERNARDO. 

And I am of my sister's mind. Indeed 
I would not leave you in this wretchedness, 
Even though the Pope should make me free to live 
In some blithe place, like others of my age, 
With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air. 
Oh, never think that I will leave you, mother ! 

LUCRETIA. 

My dear, dear children ! {.Enter Cenci, suddenly. 



What ! Beatrice here ? 
Come hither ! 

[She shrinks back, and covers her face. 

Nay, hide not your face, 'tis fair ; 
Look up ! Why, yesternight you dared to look 
With disobedient insolence upon me, 
Bending a stern and an inquiring brow 
On what I meant ; whilst I then sought to hide 
That which I came to tell you — but in vain. 

Beatrice {wildly staggering towards the door). 
Oh, that the earth would gape. Hide me, oh God ! 

CENCI. 

Then it was I whose inarticulate words 
Fell from my lips, who with tottering steps 
Fled from your presence, as you now from mine. 
Stay, I command you ! From this day and hour 
Never again, I think, with fearless eye, 
And brow superior, and unaltered cheek, 
And that lip made for tenderness or scorn, 
Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind ; 
Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber, 
Thou too, loathed image of thy cursed mother, 

[To Bernardo 
Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate ! 

[Exeunt Beatrice and Bernardo. 
{Aside.) So much has passed between us as must 
Me bold, her fearful. — 'Tis an awful thing [make 
To touch such mischief as I now conceive : 
So men sit shivering on the dewy bank 
And try the chill stream with their feet ; once in — 
How the delighted spirit pants for joy ! 

lucretia {advancing timidly towards him). 
Oh, husband ! Pray forgive poor Beatrice, 
She meant not any ill. 

CENCI. 

Nor you perhaps ? 
Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote 
Parricide with his alphabet ? Nor Giacomo ? 
Nor those two most unnatural sons, who stirred 
Enmity up against me with the Pope ? 
Whom in one night merciful God cut off : 
Innocent lambs ! They thought not any ill. 



You were not here conspiring ? you said nothing 

Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman ; 

Or be condemned to death for some offence, 

And you would be the witnesses? —This failing, 

How just it were to hire assassins, or 

Put sudden poison in my evening drink ? 

Or smother me when overcome by wine ? 

Seeing we had no other judge but God, 

And he had sentenced me, and there were none 

But you to be the executioners 

Of his decree enregistered in heaven 1 

Oh, no ! You said not this \ 

lucretia. 

So help me God, 
I never thought the tilings you charge me with ! 

CENCI. 

If you dare speak that wicked lie again, 
I'll kill you. What ! it was not by your counsel 
That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night ? 
You did not hope to stir some enemies 
Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn 
What every nerve of you now trembles at 1 
You judged that men were bolder than they are ; 
Few dare to stand between their grave and me. 

LUCRETIA. 

Look not so dreadfully ! By my salvation 
I knew not aught that Beatrice designed ; 
Nor do I think she designed any thing 
Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers. 

CENCI. 

Blaspheming liar ! You are damned for this ! 
But I will take you where you may persuade 
The stones you tread on to deliver you : 
For men shall there be none but those who dare 
All things ; not question that which I command. 
On Wednesday next I shall set out : you know 
That savage rock, the Castle of Petrella ? 
'Tis safely walled, and moated round about : 
Its dungeons under ground, and its thick towers 
Never told tales ; though they have heard and .seen 
What might make dumb things speak. Why do 

you linger ? 
Make speediest preparation for the journey ! 

[Exit Lucretia. 
The all-beholding sun yet shines ; I hear 
A busy stir of men about the streets ; 
I see the bright sky through the window panes : 
It is a garish, broad, and peering day ; 
Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears ; 
And every little corner, nook, and hole, 
Is penetrated with the insolent light. 
Come, darkness ! Yet, what is the day to me \ 
And wherefore should I wish for night, who do 
A deed which shall confound both night and day ? 
'Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist 
Of horror : if there be a sun in heaven, 
She shall not dare to look upon its beams ; 
Nor feel its warmth. Let her, then, wish for 

night ; 
The act I think shall soon extinguish all 
For me : I bear a darker, deadlier gloom 
Than the earth's shade, or interlunar air, 
Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud, 
In which I walk secure and unbeheld 
Towards my purpose. — Would that it were done ! 

[Exit 



i:w 



THK CENCI. 



SCENE II. 

A Chamber in the Vatican. 

Enter Cam 11.1.0 athi GlACOMO, in conversation* 

CAMILLO. 

There is an obsolete and doubtful law, 

By which you might obtain a bare provision 

Of food and clothing. 

GIACOMO. 

Nothing more ? Alas ! 
Bare must be the provision which strict law 
Awards, and aged sullen avarice pays. 
Why did my father not apprentice me 
To some mechanic trade ? I should have then 
Been trained in no high-born necessities 
Which I could meet not by my daily toil. 
The eldest son of a rich nobleman 
Is heir to all his incapacities ; 
He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you, 
Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once 
From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food, 
An hundred servants, and six palaces, 
To that which nature doth indeed require ? — 

CAMILLO. 

Nay, there is reason in your plea ; 'twere hard. 

GIACOMO. 

'Tis hard for a firm man to bear : but I 
Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth, 
Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father, 
Without a bond or witness to the deed : 
And children, who inherit her fine senses, 
The fairest creatures in this breathing world ; 
And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal, 
Do you not think the Pope would interpose 
And stretch authority beyond the law ? 

CAMILLO. 

Though your peculiar case is hard, I know 

The Pope will not divert the course of law. 

After that impious feast the other night 

I spoke with him, and urged him then to check 

Your father's cruel hand ; he frowned, and said, 

" Children are disobedient, and they sting 

Their fathers' hearts to madness and despair, 

Requiting years of care with contumely. 

I pity the Count Cenci from my heart ; 

His outraged love perhaps awakened hate, 

And thus he is exasperated to ill. 

In the great war between the old and young, 

I, who have white hairs and a tottering body, 

Will keep at least blameless neutrality." 

Enter Orsino. 
You, my good lord Orsino, heard those words. 

ORSINO. 

What words ? 

GIACOMO. 

Alas, repeat them not again ! 
There then is no redress for me ; at least 
None but that which I may achieve myself, 
Since I am driven to the brink. But, say, 
My innocent sister and my only brother * 
Are dying underneath my father's eye. 
The memorable torturers of this land, 
Ga-leaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin, 
Never inflicted on their meanest slave 
What these endure ; shall they have no protection ? 



CAMILLO. 

Why, if they would petition to the Pope, 
1 siv not how he could refuse it — yet 
He holds it of most dangerous example 
In aught to weaken the paternal power, 
Being, as 'twere, the shadow of his own. 
I pray you now excuse me. I have business 
That will not bear delay. 

[Exit Camillo. 
GIACOMO. 

But you, Orsino, 
Have the petition ; wherefore not present it ! 

ORSINO. 

I have presented it, and backed it with 
My earnest prayers, and urgent interest ; 
It was returned unanswered. I doubt not 
But that the strange and execrable deeds 
Alleged in it — in truth they might well baffle 
Any belief — have turned the Pope's displeasure 
Upon the accusers from the criminal : 
So I should guess from what Camillo said. 

GIACOMO. 

My friend, that palace-walking devil, Gold, 

Has whispered silence to his Holiness : 

And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire. 

What should we do but strike ourselves to death ? 

For he who is our murderous persecutor 

Is shielded by a father's holy name, 

Or I would — 

[Stops abruptly 

ORSINO. 

What ? Fear not to speak your thought. 
Words are but holy as the deeds they cover : 
A priest who has forsworn the God he serves ; 
A judge who makes the truth weep at his decree ; 
A friend who should weave counsel, as I now, 
But as the mantle of some selfish guile ; 
A father who is all a tyrant seems, 
Were the profaner for his sacred name 

GIACOMO. 

Ask me not what I think ; the unwilling brain 
Feigns often what it would not ; and we trust 
Imagination with such phantasies 
As the tongue dares not fashion into words ; 
Which have no words, their horror makes them 
To the mind's eye. My heart denies itself [dim 
To think what you demand. 

ORSINO. 

But a friend's bosom 
Is as the inmost cave of our own mind, 
Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day, 
And from the all-communicating air. 
You look what I suspected — 

GIACOMO. 

Spare me now 1 
I am as one lost in a midnight wood, 
Who dares not ask some harmless passenger 
The path across the wilderness, lest he, 
As my thoughts are, should be — a murderer. 
I know you are my friend, and all I dare 
Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee. 
But now my heart is heavy, and would take 
Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care. 
Pardon me, that I say farewell — farewell ! 
I would that to my own suspected self 
I could address a word so full of peace. 



TILE CENCI. 



139 



ORSINO. 

Farewell ! — Be your thoughts better or more bold. 

[Exit Giacomo. 
I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo 
To feed his hope with cold encouragement : 
It fortunately serves my close designs 
That 'tis a trick of this same family 
To analyse their own and other minds. 
Such self-anatomy shall teach the will 
Dangerous secrets : for it tempts our powers, 
Knowing what must be thought, and may be done, 
Into the depth of darkest purposes : 
So Cenci fell into the pit ; even I, 
Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself, 
And made me shrink from what I cannot shun, 
Show a poor figure to my own esteem, 
To which I grow half reconciled. I'll do 
As little mischief as I can ; that thought 
Shall fee the accuser conscience. 

[After a pause. 
Now what harm 
If Cenci should be murdered ? — Yet, if murdered, 
Wherefore by me ? And what if I could take 
The profit, yet omit the sin and peril 
In such an action ? Of all earthly things 
I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words ; 
And such is Cenci : and while Cenci lives 
His daughter's dowry were a secret grave 
If a priest wins her. — Oh, fair Beatrice ! 
Would that I loved thee not, or, loving thee, 
Could but despise danger, and gold, and all 
That frowns between my wish and its effect, 



Or smiles beyond it ! There is no escape : 

Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar, 

And follows me to the resort of men, 

And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams, 

So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire ; 

And if I strike my damp and dizzy head, 

My hot palm scorches it : her very name, 

But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart 

Sicken and pant ; and thus unprofitably 

I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights, 

Till weak imagination half possesses 

The self-created shadow. Yet much longer 

Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours : 

From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo 

I must work out my own dear purposes. 

I see, as from a tower, the end of all : 

Her father dead ; her brother bound to me 

By a dark secret, surer than the grave ; 

Her mother scared and unexpostulating 

From the dread manner of her wish achieved : 

And she ! — Once more take courage, my faint 

heart ; 
What dares a friendless maiden matched with 

thee ? 
I have such foresight as assures success ; 
Some unbeheld divinity doth ever, 
When dread events are near, stir up men's minds 
To black suggestions ; and he prospers best, 
Not who becomes the infatrument of ill, 
But who can flatter the dark spirit, that makes 
Its empire and its prey of other hearts, 
Till it become his slave — as I will do. 

[Exit 



ACT III. 



SCENE I. 

An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. 

Lucretia ; to her enter Beatrice. 
Beatrice (she enters staggering, and speaks wildly). 
Reach me that handkerchief ! — My brain is hurt ; 
My eyes are full of blood ; just wipe them for me — 
I see but indistinctly. — 

LUCRETIA. 

My sweet child, 
You have no wound ; 'tis only a cold dew 
That starts from your dear brow. — Alas ! alas ! 
What has befallen \ 

BEATRICE. 

How comes this hair undone ? 
Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, 
And yet I tied it fast. - O, horrible ! 
The pavement sinks under my feet ! The walls 
Spin round ! I see a woman weeping there, 
And standing calm and motionless, whilst I 
Slide giddily as the world reels.— My God ! 
The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood ! 
The sunshine on the floor is black ! The air 
Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe 
In charnel-pits ! Pah! I am choked! There creeps 
A clinging, black, contaminating mist 
About me — 'tis substantial, heavy, thick ; 
1 cannot pluck it from me, for it glues 



My fingers and my limbs to one another, 
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves 
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning 
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life ! 
My God ! I never knew what the mad felt 
Before ; for I am- mad beyond all doubt ! 

[More wildly. 
No, I am dead ! These putrefying limbs 
Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul, 
Which would burst forth into the wandering air ! 

[A pause 
What hideous thought was that I had even now ? 
'Tis gone ; and yet its burthen remains here 
O'er these dull eyes — upon this weary heart ! 
O, world ! 0, life ! 0, day ! 0, misery ! 

LUCRETIA. 

What ails thee, my poor child ? She answers not : 
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain, 
But not its cause ; suffering has dried away 
The source from which it sprung. — 

Beatrice (franticly). 

Like Parricide- 
Misery has killed its father : yet its father 
Never like mine — 0, God ! What thing am I ? 

LUCRETIA. 

My dearest child, what has your father done ? 



14) 



THE CENCI. 



BK4TRICI (doubtfully). 

Who art thou, questioner I 1 have no father. 

[Aside, 

She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me, 
It is a piteous office, 

[To Litrktia, in a slow, subdued voice. 
Do you know, 
I thought I was that wretched Beatrice 
Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales 
From hall to hall by the entangled hair; 
At others, pens up naked iu damp cells 
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there, 
Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story 
So did I overact in my sick dreams, 
That I imagined — no, it cannot be ! 
Horrible things have been in this wild world, 
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange 
Of good and ill ; and worse have been conceived 
Than ever there was found a heart to do. 
But never fancy imaged such a deed 



{Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself. 
Who art thou ? Swear to me, ere I die 
With fearful expectation, that indeed 
Thou art not what thou seemest — Mother ! 



LUCRETIA. 



Oh! 



My sweet child, know you — 



BEATRICE. 

Yet speak it not : 
For then if this be truth, that other too 
Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth, 
Linked with each lasting circumstance of life, 
Never to change, never to pass away. 
W r hy so it is. This is the Cenci Palace ; 
Thou ai't Lucretia ; I am Beatrice. 
I have talked some wild words, but will no more. 
Mother, come near me : from this point of time, 
I am — 

[Her voice dies aivay faintly. 

LUCRETIA. 

Alas ! what has befallen thee, child ? 
What has thy father done ? 

BEATRICE. 

What have I done ? 
Am I not innocent ? Is it my crime 
That one with white hair, and impei'ious brow, 
Who tortured me from my forgotten years, 
As parents only dare, should call himself 
My father, yet should be ! — Oh, what am I ? 
What name, what place, what memory shall be 
What retrospects, outliving even despair? [mine? 

LUCRETIA. 

He is a violent tyrant, surely, child : 

We know that death alone can make us free ; 

HLs death or ours. But what can he have done 

Of deadlier outrage or worse injury ? 

Thou art unlike thyself ; thine eyes shoot forth 

A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me, 

Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine 

With one another. 

BEATRICE. 

Tie the restless life 
Tortured within them. If I try to speak 
I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done ; 



What, yet I know not — something which shall make 
The thing that I have suffered but a shadow 
In the dread lightning which avenges it ; 
Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying 
The consequence of what it cannot cure. 
Some such thing is to be endured or done : 
When I know what, I shall be still and calm, 
And never anything will move me more. 
But now ! — Oh blood, which art my father's blood, 
! Circling through these contaminated veins, 
] If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth, 
I Could wash away the crime, and punishment 
I By which I suffer — no, that cannot be ! 
Many might doubt there were a God above 
Who sees and permits evil, and so die : 
That faith no agony shall obscure in me. 

LUCRETIA. 

It must indeed have been some bitter wrong ; 
Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh ! my lost child, 
Hide not in proud impenetrable grief 
Thy sufferings from my fear. 

BEATRICE. 

I hide them not. 
What are the words which you would have me 

speak ? 
I, who can feign no image in my mind 
Of that which has transformed me. I, whose 
Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up [thought 
In its own formless horror. Of all w r ords, 
That minister to mortal intercourse, 
Which wouldst thou hear ? For there is none to 
My misery : if another ever knew [tell 

Aught like to it, she died as I will die, 
And left it, as I must, without a name. 
Death ! Death ! Our law and our religion call thee 
A punishment and a reward. Oh, which 
Have I deserved ? 

LUCRETIA. 

The peace of innocence ; 
Till in your season you be called to heaven. 
Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done 
No evil. Death must be the punishment 
Of crime, or the reward of trampling down 
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path 
Which leads to immortality. 

BEATRICE. 

Ay, death — 
The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God, 
Let me not be bewildered while I judge. 
If I must five day after day, and keep 
These limbs, the unworthy temple of thy spirit, 
As a foul den from which what thou abhorrest 
May mock thee, unavenged — it shall not be ! 
Self-murder — no that might be no escape, 
For thy decree yawns like a Hell between 
Our will and it. — Oh ! in this mortal world 
There is no vindication and no law, 
Which can adjudge and execute the doom 
Of that through which I suffer. 

Enter ORsrxo. 
{She approaches him solemnly.) Welcome, Friend! 
I have to tell you that, since last we met, 
I have endured a wrong so great and strange, 
That neither life nor death can give me rest. 
Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds 
W T hich have no form, sufferings which have no 
tongue. 



THE CENCI. 



141 



ORSINO. 

And what is he who has thus injured you ? 



The man 



BEATRICE. 

they call my father : a dread name. 
orsi.no 



orsi.no 
It cannot he — 

BEATRICE. 

What it can be, or not, 
Forbear to think. It is, and it has been ; 
Advise me how it shall not be again. 
I thought to die ; but a religious awe 
Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself 
Might be no refuge from the consciousness 
Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak ! 

ORSINO. 

Accuse him of the deed, and let the law 
Avenge thee, 

BEATRICE. 

Oh, ice-hearted counsellor ! 
If I could find a word that might make known 
The crime of my destroyer ; and that done, 
My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret 
Which cankers my heart's core ; ay, lay all bare, 
So that my unpolluted fame should be 
With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story ; 
A mock, a by-word, an astonishment : — 
If this were done, which never shall be done, 
Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded hate, 
And the strange horror of the accuser's tale, 
Baffling belief, and overpowering speech ; 
Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapt 
Tn hideous hints — Oh, most assured redress ! 

ORSINO. 

You will endure it then? 

BEATRICE. 

Endure ! — Orsino, 
It seems your counsel is small profit. 

[Turns from him, and speaks half to herself. 

All must be suddenly resolved and done. 
What is this undistinguishable mist 
Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow, 
Darkening each other ? ~~ 

ORSINO. 

Should the offender live ? 
Triumph in his misdeed ? and make, by use, 
His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt, 
Thine element ; until thou mayest become 
Utterly lost ; subdued even to the hue 
Of that which thou permittest ? 

Beatrice (to herself). 

Mighty death ! 
Thou double-visaged shadow ! Only judge ! 
Rightfullest arbiter ! 

[She retires, absorbed in thought. 

LUCRETIA. 

If the lightning 
Of God has e'er descended to avenge — 

ORSINO. 

Blaspheme not ! His high Providence commits 
Its glory on this earth, and their own wrongs 
Into the hands of men ; if they neglect 
To punish crime — 



LUCRETIA. 

But if one, like this wretch, 
Should mock, with gold, opinion, law, and power ? 
If there be no appeal to that which makes 
The guiltiest tremble ! If, because our wrongs, 
For that they are unnatural, strange, and monstrous, 
Exceed all measure of belief? Oh, God ! 
If, for the very reasons which should make 
Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs ? 
And we, the victims, bear worse punishment 
Than that appointed for their torturer ? 

ORSINO. 

Think not 
But that there is redress where there is wrong, 
So we be bold enough to seize it. 

LUCRETIA. 

How? 
If there were any way to make all sure, 
I know not — but I think it might be good 
To— 

ORSINO. 

Why, his late outrage to Beatrice ; 
For it is such, as I but faintly gue^s, 
As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her 
Only one duty, how she may avenge : 
You, but one refuge from ills ill endured ; 
Me, but one counsel — 

LUCRETIA. 

For we cannot hope 
That aid, or retribution, or resource 
Will arise thence, where every other one 
Might find them with less need. 

(Beatrice advances.) 



Then— 

BEATRICE. 

Peace, Orsino ! 
And, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray, 
That you put off, as garments overworn, 
Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear, 
And all the fit restraints of daily life, 
Which have been borne from childhood, but which 
Would be a mockery to my holier plea. [now 

As I have said, I have endured a wrong, 
Which, though it be expressionless, is such 
As asks atonement, both for what is past, 
And lest I be reserved, day after day, 
To load with crimes an overburthened soul, 
And be — what ye can dream not. I have prayed 
To God, and I have talked with my own heart, 
And have unravelled my entangled will, 
And have at length determined what is right. 
Art thou my friend, Orsino ? False or true ? 
Pledge thy salvation ere I speak. 

ORSINO. 

I swear 
To dedicate my cunning, and my strength, 
My silence, and whatever else is mine, 
To thy commands. 

LUCRETIA. 

You think we should device 
His death ? 

BEATRICE. 

And execute what is devised, 
And suddenly. We must be brief and bold. 



112 



THE CENCI. 



ORSINO. 

And yet most cautious. 

LUCRETIA. 

For the jealous laws 
Would punish us with death and infamy 
For that which it became themselves to do. 



BEATRICE. 

Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. 
What are the means ? 



Orsino, 



ORSINO. 

I know two dull, fierce outlaws, 
Who think man's spirit as a worm's, and they 
Would trample out, for any slight caprice, 
The meanest or the noblest life. This mood 
Is marketable here in Rome. They sell 
What we now want. 

LUCRETIA. 

To-morrow, before dawn, 
Cenci will take us to that lonely rock, 
Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines. 
If he arrive there — 

BEATRICE. 

He must not arrive. 

ORSINO. 

Will it be dark before you reach the tower ? 

LUCRETIA. 

The sun will scarce be set. 

BEATRICE. 

But I remember 
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road 
Crosses a deep ravine ; 'tis rough and narrow, 
And winds with short turns down the precipice ; 
And in its depth there is a mighty rock, 
Which has, from unimaginable years, 
Sustained itself with terror and with toil 
Over a gulf, and with the agony 
With which it clings seems slowly coming down ; 
Even as a wretched soul hour after hour 
Clings to the mass of life ; yet, clinging, leans ; 
And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss 
In which it fears to fall : beneath this crag 
Huge as despair, as if in weariness, 
The melancholy mountain yawns — below, 
You hear but see not an impetuous torrent 
Raging among the caverns, and a bridge 
Crosses the chasm ; and high above there grow, 
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag, 
Cedars, and yews, and pines ; whose tangled hair 
Is matted in one solid roof of shade 
By the dark ivy's twine. At noon-day here 
'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night. 

ORSINO. 

Before you reach that bridge make some excuse 
For spurring on your mules, or loitering 
Until— 

BEATRICE. 

What sound is that ? 

LUCRETIA. 

Hark ! No, it cannot be a servant's step ; 

It must be Cenci, unexpectedly 

Returned — Make some excuse for being here. 



Beatrice (to Orsino as she goes out). 
That step we hear approach must never pass 
The bridge of which we spoke. 

[Exeunt Lucretia and Beatrice. 

ORSINO. 

What shall I do ? 
Cenci must find me here, and I must bear 
The imperious inquisition of his looks 
As to what brought me hither : let me mask 
Mine own in some inane and vacant smile. 

Enter Giacomo, in a hurried manner. 
How ! Have you ventured thither 1 know you then 
That Cenci is from home ? 

GIACOMO. 

I sought him here ; 
And now must wait till he returns 

ORSINO. 

Great God ! 
Weigh you the danger of this rashness \ 



Ay! 
Does my destroyer know his danger ? We 
Are now no more, as once, parent and child, 
But man to man ; the oppressor to the oppressed; 
The slanderer to the slandered ; foe to foe. 
He has cast Nature off, which was his shield, 
And Nature casts him off, who is her shame ; 
And I spurn both. Is it a father's throat 
Which I will shake ? and say, I ask not gold ; 
I ask not happy years ; nor memories 
Of tranquil childhood ; nor home-sheltered love ; 
Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more; 
But only my fair fame ; only one hoard 
Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate, 
Under the penury heaped on me by thee ; 
Or I will — God can understand and pardon, 
Why should I speak with man? 

ORSINO. 

Be calm, dear friend. 

GIACOMO. 

Well, I will calmly tell you what he did. 

This old Francesco Cenci, as you know, 

Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me, 

And then denied the loan ; and left me so 

In poverty, the which I sought to mend 

By holding a poor office in the state. 

It had been promised to me, and already 

I bought new clothing for my ragged babes, 

And my wife smiled ; and my heart knew repose; 

When Cenci's intercession, as I found, 

Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus 

He paid for vilest service. I returned 

With this ill news, and we sate sad together 

Solacing our despondency with tears 

Of such affection and unbroken faith 

As temper life's worst bitterness ; when he, 

As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse, 

Mocking our poverty, and telling us 

Such was God's scourge for disobedient sons. 

And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame, 

I spoke of my wife's dowry ; but he coined 

A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted 

The sum in secret riot ; and he saw 

My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth. 



THE CENCI. 



143 



And when I knew the impression he had made, 
And felt my wife insult with silent scorn 
My ardent truth, and look averse and cold, 
1 went forth too : but soon returned again ; 
Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught 
My children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried, 
" Give us clothes, father ! Give us better food ! 
What you in one night squander were enough 
For months!" I looked and saw that home was hell. 
And to that hell will I return no more, 
Until mine enemy has rendered up 
Atonement, or, as he gave life to me, 
I will, reversing nature's law — 

ORSINO. 

Trust me, 
The compensation which thou seekest here 
Will be denied. 

GIACOMO. 

Then — Are you not my friend ? 
Did you not hint at the alternative, 
Upon the brink of which you see I stand, 
The other day when we conversed together ? 
My wrongs were then less. That word parricide, 
Although I am resolved, haunts me like fear. 

ORSINO. 

It must be fear itself, for the bare word 
Ts hollow mockery. Mark, how wisest God 
Draws to one point the threads of a just doom, 
So sanctifying it : what you devise 
Is, as it were, accomplished. 



Is he dead ? 

ORSINO. 

His grave is ready. Know that since we met 
Cenci has done an outrage to his daughter. 



What outrage I 

ORSINO. 

That she speaks not, but you may 
Conceive such half conjectures as I do, 
From her fixed paleness, and the lofty grief 
Of her stern brow, bent on the idle air, 
And her severe unmodulated voice, 
Drowning both tenderness and dread ; and last 
From this ; that whilst her step-mother and I, 
Bewildered in our horror, talk together 
With obscure hints ; both self-misunderstood, 
And darkly guessing, stumbling, in our talk, 
Over the truth, and yet to its revenge, 
She interrupted us, and with a look 
Which told, before she spoke it, he must die — 

GIACOMO. 

It is enough. My doubts are well appeased ; 

There is a higher reason for the act 

Than mine ; there is a holier judge than me, 

A more unblamed avenger. Beatrice, 

Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth 

Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised 

A living flower, but thou hast pitied it 

With needless tears ! Fair sister, thou in whom 

Men wondered how such loveliness and wisdom 

Did not destroy each other ! Is there made 

Ravage of thee ? 0, heart, I ask no more 

Justification ! Shall I wait, Orsino, 

Till he return, and stab him at the door? 



ORSINO. 

Not so ; some accident might interpose 
To rescue him from what is now most sure ; 
And you are unprovided where to fly, 
How to excuse or to conceal. Nay, listen : 
All is contrived ; success is so assured 
That— 

Enter Beatrick. 
BEATRICE. 

'Tis my brother's voice ! You know me not \ 

GIACOMO. 

My sister, my lost sister ! 

BEATRICE. 

Iiost indeed ! 
I see Orsino has talked with you, and 
That you conjecture things too horrible 
To speak, yet far less than the truth. Now, stay not, 
He might return : yet kiss me ; I shall know 
That then thou hast consented to his death. 
Farewell, farewell ! Let piety to God, 
Brotherly love, justice and clemency, 
And all things that make tender hardest hearts, 
Make thine hard, brother. Answer not — farewell. 

[Exeunt severally. 



SCENE II. 

A mean Apartment in Giacomo's House. 

Giacomo alone. 

GIACOMO. 

'Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet. 

[Thunder, and the sound of a storm. 
What ! can the everlasting elements 
Feel with a worm like man ? If so, the shaft 
Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall 
On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep: 
They are now living in unmeaning dreams : 
But I must wake, still doubting if that deed 
Be just which was most necessary. O, 
Thou unreplenished lamp ! whose narrow fire 
Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge 
Devouring darkness hovers ! Thou small flame, 
Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls, 
Still flickerest up and down, how very soon, 
Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be 
As thou hadst never been ! So wastes and sinks 
Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine : 
But that no power can fill with vital oil 
That broken lamp of flesh. Ha ! 'tis the blood 
Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold : 
It is the form that moulded mine, that sinks 
Into the white and yellow spasms of death : 
It is the soul by which mine was arrayed 
In God's immortal likeness which now stands 
Naked before Heaven's judgment-seat ! 

[A bell strikes. 

One ! Two ! 
The hours crawl on ; and when my hairs are white 
My son will then perhaps be waiting thus, 
Tortured between just hate and vain remorse ; 
Chiding the tardy messenger of news 
Like those which I expect. I almost wish 
He be not dead, although my wrongs are gro«t .' 
Yet — 'tis Orsino's step. 



I i; 



T11K CENCI. 



Enter Ormno. 
Speak ! 

ORSINO. 

I am come 
To Baj he has escaped. 

GlACOMO. 

Escaped ! 

obsino. 

And safe 
Within PetreUa. He passed by the spot 
Appointed for the deed an hour too soon. 

GIACOMO. 

Are we the fools of such contingencies ? 

And do we waste in blind misgivings thus 

The hours when we should act? Then wind and 
thunder, 

Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter 

With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I hence- 
forth 

Will ne'er repent of aught designed or done, 

But my repentance. 

ORSINO. 

See, the lamp is out. 

GIACOMO. 

If no remorse is ours when the dim air 

Has drank this innocent flame, why should we 

quail 
When Cenci's life, that light by which ill spirits 
Seethe worst deeds they prompt, shall sink for ever? 
No, I am hardened. 

ORSINO. 

Why, what need of this ? 
Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse 
In a just deed ? Although our first plan failed, 
Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest. 
But light the lamp ; let us not talk i' the dark. 

giacomo [lighting the lamp). 
And yet, once quenched, I cannot thus relume 
My father's life : do you not think his ghost 
Might plead that argument with God ? 

ORSINO. 

Once gone, 
You cannot now recall your sister's peace ; 
Your own extinguished years of youth and hope ; 
Nor your wife's bitter words ; nor all the taunts 
Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune 

takes ; 
Nor your dead mother ; nor — 

GIACOMO. 

O, speak no more ! 
I am resolved, although this very hand 
Must quench the life that animated it. 



OBSINO. 
There is no need of that. Listen : you know 
OlimpiOj the castellan of Petrella 
In old Colonna's time ; him whom your father 
Degraded from his post ? And Marzio, 
That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last 

year 
Of a reward of blood, well earned and due ? 

GIACOMO. 

I knew Olimpio ; and they say he hated 
Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage 
His lips grew white only to see him pass. 
Of Marzio I know nothing. 

ORSINO. 

Marzio's hate 
Matches Olimpio's. I have sent these men, 
But in your name, and as at your request, 
To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia. 



Only to talk ? 

ORSINO. 

The moments which even now 
Pass onward to to-morrow's midnight hour, 
May memorise their flight with death : ere then 
They must have talked, and may perhaps have done, 
And made an end. 

GIACOMO. 

Listen ! What sound is that ? 

ORSINO. 

The house-dog moans, and the beams crack: nought 
else. 

GIACOMO. 

It is my wife complaining in her sleep : 

I doubt not she is saying bitter things 

Of me ; and all my children round her dreaming 

That I deny them sustenance. 

ORSINO. 

Whilst he 
Who truly took it from them, and who fills 
Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps 
Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly 
Mocks thee in visions of successful hate 
Too like the truth of day. 

GIACOMO. 

If e'er he wakes 
Again, I will not trust to hireling hands — 

ORSINO. 

Why, that were well. I must be gone; good night! 
When next we meet may all be done ! 



Forgotten : Oh, that I had never been ! 



And all 
[Exeunt. 



THE CENCI. 



146 



ACT IV. 



SCENE I. 

An Apartment in the Castle of Petrel'm. 

Enter Cenci. 

CENCI. 

She comes not ; yet I left her even now 
Vanquished and faint. She knows the penalty 
Of her delay ; yet what if threats are vain ? 
Am I not now within Petrella's moat ? 
Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome ? 
Might I not drag her by the golden hair ? 
Stamp on her ? Keep her sleepless, till her brain 
Be overworn ? Tame her with chains and famine ? 
Less would suffice. Yet so to leave undone 
What I most seek ! No, 'tis her stubborn will, 
Which, by its own consent, shall stoop as low 
As that which drags it down. 

Enter Lucretia. 

Thou loathed wretch ! 
Hide thee from my abhorrence ; fly, begone ! 
Yet stay ! Bid Beatrice come hither. 

LUCRETIA. 

Oh, 
Husband ! 1 pray, for thine own wretched sake, 
Heed what thou dost. A man who walks like thee 
Through crimes, and through the danger of his 
Each hour may stumble o'er a sudden grave, [crimes, 
And thou art old ; thy hairs are hoary grey ; 
As thou wouldst save thyself from death and hell, 
Pity thy daughter ; give her to some friend 
In marriage ; so that she may tempt thee not 
To hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse there be. 

CENCI. 

What ! like her sister, who has found a home 
To mock my hate from with prosperity X 
Strange ruin shall destroy both her and thee, 
And all that yet remain. My death may be 
Rapid, her destiny outspeeds it. Go, 
Bid her come hither, and before my mood 
Be changed, lest I should drag her by the hair. 

LUCRETIA. 

She sent me to thee, husband. At thy presence 
She fell, as thou dost know, into a trance ; 
And in that trance she heard a voice which said, 
* Cenci must die ! let him confess himself ! 
Even now the accusing angel waits to hear 
If God, to punish his enormous crimes, 
Harden his dying heart ! " 

CENCI. 

t Why — such things are : 

fco doubt divine revealings may be made. 
'Tis plain I have been favoured from above, 
For when I cursed my sons, they died— Ay— so— 
As to the right or wrong, that's talk— repentance— 
Repentance is an easy moment's work, 
And more depends on God than me. Well — well — 
I must give up the greater point, which was 
To poison and corrupt her soul. 

[A pause ,• Lucretia approaches anxiously, 
and then shrinks back as he speaks. 



One, two ; 
Ay — Rocco and Cristofano my curse 
Strangled : and Giacomo, I think, will find 
Life a worse Hell than that beyond the grave : 
Beatrice shall, if there be skill in hate, 
Die in despair, blaspheming : to Bernardo, 
He is so innocent, I will bequeath 
The memory of these deeds, and make his youth 
The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts 
Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb. 
When all is done, out in the wide Campagna, 
I will pile up my silver and my gold ; 
My costly robes, paintings, and tapestries ; 
My parchments, and all records of my wealth ; 
And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave 
Of my possessions nothing but my name ; 
Which shall be an inheritance to strip 
Its wearer bare as infamy. That done, 
My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign 
Into the hands of him who wielded it ; 
Be it for its own punishment or theirs, 
He will not ask it of me till the lash 
Be broken in its last and deepest wound ; 
Until its hate be all inflicted. Yet, 
Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me make 
Short work and sure. [Going. 

lucretia (stops him). 

Oh, stay ! It was a feint : 
She had no vision, and she heard no voice. 
I said it but to awe thee. 

CENCI. 

That is well 
Vile palterer with the sacred truth of God, 
Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming lie ! 
For Beatrice, worse terrors are in store, 
To bend her to my will. 

LUCRETIA. 

Oh ! to what will ? 
What cruel sufferings, more than she has known, 
Canst thou inflict ? 

CENCI. 

Andrea ! go, call my daughter, 
And if she comes not, tell her that I come. 
What sufferings ? I will drag her, step by step, 
Through infamies unheard of among men ; 
She shall stand shelterless in the broad noon 
Of public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad, 
One among which shall be — What ? Canst thou 

guess ? 
She shall become (for what she most abhors 
Shall have a fascination to entrap 
Her loathing will), to her own conscious self 
All she appears to others ; and when dead, 
As she shall die un shrived and unforgiven, 
A rebel to her father and her God, 
Her corpse shall be abandoned to the hounds ; 
Her name shall be the terror of the earth ; 
Her spirit shall approach the throne of God 
Plague-spotted with my curses. I will make 
Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin. 



14(5 



THE CENCI. 



Enttr Andrea. 



The lady Beatrice— 



Said she ? 



CENCI. 
Speak, pale slave ! What 



ANDREA. 

My Lord, 'twas what she looked ; she said : 
" Go tell my father that I see the gulf 
Of Hell between us two, which he may pass ; 
I will not." [Exit Andrea. 

CENCT. 

Go thou quick, Lucretia, 
Tell her to come ; yet let her understand 
Her coming is consent: and say, moreover, 
That if she come not I will curse her. 

[Exit Lucretia. 
Ha! 
With what but with a father's curse doth God 
Panic-strike armed victory, and make pale 
Cities in their prosperity ? The world's Father 
Must grant a parent's prayer against his child, 
Be he who asks even what men call me. 
Will not the deaths of her rebellious brothers 
Awe her before 1 speak ? For I on them 
Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came. 



Well 



Enter Lucretia. 
what I Speak, wretch ! 



LUCRETIA. 

She said, " I cannot come ; 
Go tell my father that I see a torrent 
Of his own blood raffing between us." 



cenci (kneeling). 



God! 



Hear me ! If this most specious mass of flesh, 
Which thouhast made my daughter ; this my blood, 
This particle of my divided being ; 
Or rather, this my bane and my disease, 
Whose sight infects and poisons me ; this devil, 
Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant 
To aught good use ; if her bright loveliness 
Was kindled to illumine this dark world ; 
If nursed by thy selectest dew of love, 
Such virtues blossom in her as should make 
The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake, 
As thou the common God and Father art 
Of her, and me, and all ; reverse that doom ! 
Earth, in the name of God, let her food be 
Poison, until she be encrusted round 
With leprous stains ! Heaven, rain upon her head 
The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew, 
Till she be speckled like a toad ; parch up 
Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs 
To loathed lameness ! All-beholding sun, 
Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes 
With thine own bunding beams ! 

lucretia. 

Peace ! peace ! 
For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words. 
When high God grants, he punishes such prayers. 

cenci (leaping up, and throwing his right hand 

towards Heaven). 
He does his will, I mine ! This in addition, 
That if she have a child 



lucretia. 

Horrible thought ! 



That if she ever have a child ; and thou, 

Quick Nature ! I adjure thee by thy God, 

That thou be fruitful in her, and increase 

And multiply, fulfilling his command, 

And my deep imprecation ! May it be 

A hideous likeness of herself ; that as 

From a distorting mirror, she may see 

Her image mixed with what she most abhors, 

Smiling upon her from her nursing breast. 

And that the child may from its infancy 

Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed, 

Turning her mother's love to misery : 

And that both she and it may live, until 

It shall repay her care and pain with hate, 

Or what may else be more unnatural. 

So he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs 

Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave. 

Shall I revoke this curse ? Go, bid her come, 

Before my words are chronicled in heaven. 

[Exit Lucretia. 
I do not feel as if I were a man, 
But like a fiend appointed to chastise 
The offences of some unremembered world. 
My blood is running up and down my veins ! 
A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle : 
I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe ; 
My heart is beating with an expectation 
Of horrid joy. 

Enter Lucretia. 
What ? Speak ! 

LUCRETIA. 

She bids thee curse ; 
And if thy curses, as they cannot do, 
Could kill her soul — 

CENCI. 

She would not come. 'Tis well, 
I can do both : first take what I demand, 
And then extort concession. To thy chamber ! 
Fly ere I spurn thee : and beware this night 
That thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer 
To come between the tiger and his prey. 

[Exit Lucretia. 
It must be late ; mine eyes grow weary dim 
With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep. 
Conscience ! Oh, thou most insolent of lies ! 
They say that sleep, that healing dew of heaven, 
Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain 
Which thinks thee an impostor. I will go, 
First to belie thee with an hour of rest, 
Which will be deep and calm, I feel ; and then — 
0, multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake 
Thine arches with the laughter of their joy ! 
There shall be lamentation heard in Heaven 
As o'er an angel fallen ; and upon Earth 
All good shall droop and sicken, and ill things 
Shall, with a spirit of unnatural life, 



Stir and be quickened — even as I am now. 



[Exit. 



THE CENCI. 



U7 



SCENE II. 

Before the Castle of Petrel! a. 
Enter Beatrice and Lucretia above on the rampart*. 
BEATRICE. 
They come not yet. 

LUCRETIA. 

'Tis scarce midnight. 

BEATRICE. 

How slow 
Behind the course of thought, even sick with speed, 
Lags leaden-footed Time ! 

LUCRETIA. 

The minutes 
If he should wake before the deed is done ? 

BEATRICE. 

0, Mother ! He must never wake again. 
What thou hast said persuades me that our act 
Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell 
Out of a human form. 

LUCRETIA. 

'Tis true he spoke 
Of death and judgment with strange confidence 
For one so wicked ; as a man believing 
In God, yet recking not of good or ill. 
And yet to die without confession ! — 

BEATRICE. 

Oh! 

Believe that Heaven is merciful and just, 
And will not add our dread necessity 
To the amount of his offences. 

Enter Oliaipio and Marzio, below. 
LUCRETIA. 

See, 
They come. 

BEATRICE. 

All mortal things must hasten thus 
To their dark end. Let us go down. 

[Exeunt Lucretia and Beatrice from above. 

OLIMPIO. 
How feel you to this work ? 

MARZIO. 

As one who thinks 
A thousand crowns excellent market price 
For an old murderer's life. Your cheeks are pale. 

OLIMPIO. 

It is the white reflection of your own, 
Which you call pale. 

MARZIO. 

Is that their natural hue ? 

OLIMPIO. 

Or 'tis my hate, and the deferred desire 
To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood. 

MARZIO. 

You are inclined then to this business ? 



Ay, 

If one should bribe me with a thousand crowns 
To kill a serpent which had stung my child, 
I could not be more willing. 



Enter Beatrice and Lucretia below. 
Noble ladies ! 

BEATRICE. 

Are ye resolved ? 

OLIMPIO. 

Is he asleep ? 



Quiet ! 



Is all 



LUCRETIA. 

I mixed an opiate with his drink : 
He sleeps so soundly — 

BEATRICE. 

That his death will be 
But as a change of sin-chastising dreams, 
A dark continuance of the Hell within him, 
Which God extinguish ! But ye are resolved ? 
Ye know it is a high and holy deed ? 



We are resolved. 

MARZIO. 

As to the how this act 
Be warranted, it rests with you. 



BEATRICE. 



Well, follow 



OLIMPIO. 

Hush ! Hark ! What noise is that ? 

MARZIO. 

Ha ! some one comes ! 

BEATRICE. 

Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest 
Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate, 
Which ye left open, swinging to the wind, 
That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, follow ! 
And be your steps like mine, light, quick, and bold. 

[Exeunt. 



SCENE III. 

An Apartment in the Castle. 

Enter Beatrice and Lucretia. 

LUCRETIA. 

They are about it now. 

BEATRICE. 

Nay, it is done. 

LUCRETIA. 

I have not heard him groan. 



He will not groan. 



LUCRETIA. 

What sound is that ? 



BEATRICE. 

List ! 'tis the tread of feet 



About his bed. 



LUCRETIA. 

My God ! 
If he be now a cold stiff corpse — 
L 2 



148 



THE CENCI. 



BEAXBICE. 

0, fear not 
What may be done, but what is left undone : 
The act son Is all. 

Enter Olimpio and Marzio. 

Is it accomplished ? 

MARZIO. 



What 1 



Did you not call ? 



OLIMPIO. 



BEATRICE. 

When ? 



Now. 



I ask if all is over ? 

OLIMPIO. 

We dare not kill an old and sleeping man ; 
His thin grey hair, his stern and reverent brow, 
His veined hands crossed on his heaving breast, 
And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay, 
Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it. 

MARZIO. 

But I was bolder ; for I chid Olimpio, 
And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave, 
And leave me the reward. And now my knife 
Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man 
Stirred in his sleep, and said, " God ! hear, hear, 
A father's curse ! What, art thou not our father ? " 
And then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost 
Of my dead father speaking through his lips, 
And could not kill him. 

BEATRICE. 

Miserable slaves ! 
Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man, 
Found ye the boldness to return to me 
With such a deed undone ? Base palterers ! 
Cowards and traitors ! Why, the very conscience 
Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge 
Is an equivocation : it sleeps over 
A thousand daily acts disgracing men ; 
And when a deed, where mercy insults Heaven — 
Why do I talk ? 

[Snatching a dagger from one of them, and raising it. 
Hadst thou a tongue to say, 
She murdered her own father, I must do it ! 
But never dream ye shall outlive him long ! 



Stop, for God's sake ! 

MARZIO. 

I will go back and kill him. 

OLIMPIO. 

Give me the weapon, we must do thy will. 

BEATRICE. 

Take it ! Depart ! Return ! 

[Exeunt Olimpio and Marzio 

How pale thou art ! 
We do but that which 'twere a deadly crime 
To leave undone. 

LUCRETIA. 

Would it were done ! 



BEATRICE. 

Even whilst 
That doubt is passing through your mind, the 

world 
Is conscious of a change. Darkness and hell 
Have swallowed up the vapour they sent forth 
To blacken the sweet light of life. My breath 
Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood 
Runs freely through my veins. Hark ! 

Enter Olimpio and Marzio. 

He is — 



Dead! 

MARZIO. 

We strangled him, that there might be no blood ; 
And then we threw his heavy corpse i' the garden 
Under the balcony ; 'twill seem it fell. 

Beatrice (giving them a bag of coin). 
Here take this gold, and hasten to your homes. 
And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed 
By that which made me tremble, wear thou this ! 
[Clothes him in a rich mantle. 
It was the mantle which my grandfather 
Wore in his high prosperity, and men 
Envied his state : so may they envy thine. 
Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God 
To a just use. Live long and thrive ! And, mark, 
If thou hast crimes, repent : this deed is none. 

[A horn is sounded. 
LUCRETIA. 

Hark, 'tis the castle horn : my God ! it sounds 
Like the last trump. 

BEATRICE. 

Some tedious guest is coming. 

LUCRETIA. 

The drawbridge is let down ; there is a tramp 
Of horses in the court ! fly, hide yourselves ! 

[Exeunt Olimpio and Marzio. 

BEATRICE. 

Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest ; 

I scarcely need to counterfeit it now ; 

The spirit which doth reign within these limbs 

Seems strangely undisturbed. I could even sleep 

Fearless and calm : all ill is surely past. 

[Exeunt. 



SCENE IV. 

Another Apartment in the Castle. 

Enter on one side the Legate Savella, introduced by a Ser- 
vant, and on the other Lucretia and Bernardo. 



Lady, my duty to his Holiness 

Be my excuse that thus unseasonably 

I break upon your rest. I must speak with 

Count Cenci ; doth he sleep ? 

lucretia (in a hurried and confused manner/. 
I think he sleeps 
Yet, wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile, 
He is a wicked and a wrathful man ; 
Should he be roused out of his sleep to-night, 



THE CENCI. 



149 



Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams, 
It were not well ; indeed it were not well. 
Wait till day-break, — 

(Aside.) 0, I am deadly sick ! 

SAVELLA. 

I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count 
Must answer charges of the gravest import, 
And suddenly ; such my commission is. 

lucretia (with increased agitation). 
I dare not rouse him, I know none who dare ; 
'Twere perilous ; — you might as safely waken 
A serpent ; or a corpse in which some fiend 
Were laid to sleep. 

SAVELLA. 

Lady, my moments here 
Are counted. I must rouse him from his sleep, 
Since none else dare. 

lucretia (aside). 

0, terror ! 0, despair ! 
(To Bernardo.) Bernardo, conduct you the Lord 

Legate to 
Your father's chamber. [Exeunt Savella and 

[Bernardo. 
Enter Beatrice. 

BEATRICE. 

'Tis a messenger 
Come to arrest the culprit who now stands 
Before the throne of unappealable God. 
Both Earth and Heaven, consenjting arbiters, 
Acquit our deed. 

LUCRETIA. 

Oh, agony of fear ! 
Would that he yet might live ! Even now I 

heard 
The legate's followers whisper as they passed 
They had a warrant for his instant death. 
All was prepared by unforbidden means, 
Which we must pay so dearly, having done. 
Even now they search the tower, and find the 

body; 
Now they suspect the truth ; now they consult, 
Before they come to tax us with the fact ; 

horrible, 'tis all discovered ! 

BEATRICE. 

Mother, 
What is done wisely, is done well. Be bold 
As thou art just. 'Tis like a truant child, 
To fear that others know what thou hast done, 
Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus 
Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks 
All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thyself, 
And fear no other witness but thy fear. 
For if, as cannot be, some circumstance 
Should rise in accusation, we can blind 
Suspicion with such cheap astonishment, 
Or overbear it with such guiltless pride, 
As murderers cannot feign. The deed is done, 
And what may follow now regards not me. 

1 am as universal as the light ; 

Free as the earth-surrounding air ; as firm 
As the world's centre. Consequence, to me, 
Is as the wind which strikes the solid rock, 
But shakes it not. 

[A cry within and tumult. 

VOICES. 

Murder ! Murder ! Murder ! 



Enter Bernardo and Savella. 
savella (to his followers). 
Go, search the castle round ; sound the alarm ; 
Look to the gates, that none escape ! 

BEATRICE. 

What now ? 

BERNARDO. 

I know not what to say — my father's dead. 

BEATRICE. 

How, dead ? he only sleeps ; you mistake, brother. 
His sleep is very calm, very like death ; 
'Tis wonderful how well a tyrant sleeps. 
He is not dead f 

BERNARDO. 

Dead ; murdered ! 

lucretia (with extreme agitation). 

Oh, no, no, 
He is not murdered, though he may be dead ; 
I have alone the keys of those apartments. 



Ha ! Is it so \ 

BEATRICE. 

My lord, I pray excuse us ; 
We will retire ; my mother is not well ; 
She seems quite overcome with this strange horror. 
[Exeunt Lucretia and Beatrice. 

SAVELLA. 

Can you suspect who may have murdered him ? 

BERNARDO. 

I know not what to think. 

SAVELLA. 

Can you name any 
Who had an interest in his death ? 

BERNARDO. 

Alas! 
I can name none who had not, and those most 
Who most lament that such a deed is done ; 
My mother, and my sister, and myself. 

SAVELLA. 

'Tis strange ! There were clear marks of violence, 
I found the old man's body in the moonlight, 
Hanging beneath the window of his chamber 
Among the branches of a pine : he could not 
Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped 
And effortless ; 'tis true there was no blood. — 
Favour me, sir — it much imports your house 
That all should be made clear — to tell the ladies 
That I request their presence. 

[Exit Bernario. 

Enter Guards, bringing in Marzio. 



GUARD. 



We have one. 



OFFICER. 

My lord, we found this ruffian and another 
Lurking among the rocks ; there is no doubt 
But that they are the murderers of Count Ceuci 
Each had a bag of coin ; this fellow wore 
A gold-in-woven robe, which, shining bright 
Under the dark rocks to the glimmering moon, 
Betrayed them to our notice : the other fell 
Desperately fighting. 



160 



THE CENCI. 



BAl I'l I v. 

What doos he confess? 

OFFICER, 

} fa keeps firm silence ; but these lines found on him 

May speak. 

SAVELLA. 

Their language is at least sincere. 

{Reads. 

" To the Lady Beatrice. 
" That the atonement of what my nature sickens 
to conjecture may soon arrive, I send thee, at thy 
brother's desire, those who will speak and do 
more than I dare write. 

" Thy devoted servant, 

" Orsino." 

Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Bernardo. 
Knowest thou this writing, lady ? 



No. 



Nor thou ? 



lucretia (her conduct throughout the scene is 

marked by extreme agitation). 
Where was it found ? What is it ? It should be 
Orsino's hand ! It speaks of that strange horror 
Which never yet found utterance, but which 

made 
Between that hapless child and her dead father 
A gulf of obscure hatred. 

SAVELLA. 

Is it so ? 

Is it true, lady, that thy father did 
Such outrages as to awaken in thee 
Unfilial hate ? 

BEATRICE. 

Not hate, 'twas more than hate ; 
This is most true, yet wherefore question me ? 

SAVELLA. 

There is a deed demanding question done ; 
Thou hast a secret which will answer not. 

BEATRICE. 

What sayest ? My lord, your words are bold and 
rash. 

SAVELLA. 

I do arrest all present in the name 

Of the Pope's Holiness. You must to Rome. 

LUCRETIA. 

0, not to Rome ! Indeed we are not guilty. 

BEATRICE. 

Guilty ! Who dares talk of guilt ? My lord, 

I am more innocent of parricide 

Than is a child born fatherless. Dear mother, 

Your gentleness and patience are no shield 

For this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie, 

Which seems, but is not. What ! will human laws, 

Rather will ye who are their ministers, 

Bar all access to retribution first, 

And then, when Heaven doth interpose to do 

What ye neglect, arming familiar things 

To the redress of an unwonted crime, 

Make ye the victims who demanded it 

Culprits ? "lis ye are culprits! That poor wretch 



Who stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed, 
If it be true he murdered Cenci, was 
A sword in the right hand of justest God. 
Wherefore should I have wielded it ? unless 
The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name, 
God therefore scruples to avenge. 



That you desired his death ? 



You own 



BEATRICE. 

It would have been 
A crime no less than his, if for one moment 
That fierce desire had faded in my heart. 
'Tis true I did believe, and hope, and pray, 
Ay, I even knew — for God is wise and just, 
That some strange sudden death hung over him. 
'Tis true that this did happen, and most true 
There was no other rest for me on earth, 
No other hope in Heaven ; — now what of this ? 

SAVELLA. 

Strange thoughts beget strange deeds; and here are 
I judge thee not. [both : 

BEATRICE. 

And yet, if you arrest me, 
You are the judge and executioner 
Of that which is the life of life : the breath 
Of accusation kills an innocent name, 
And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, 
Which is a mask without it. 'Tis most false 
That I am guilty of foul parricide ; 
Although I must rejoice, for justest cause, 
That other hands have sent my father's soul 
To ask the mercy he denied to me. 
Now leave us free : stain not a noble house 
With vague surmises of rejected crime ; 
Add to our sufferings and your own neglect 
No heavier sum ; let them have been enough : 
Leave us the wreck we have. 

SAVELLA. 

I dare not, lady. 
I pray that you prepare yourselves for Rome : 
There the Pope's further pleasure will be known. 

LUCRETIA. 

0, not to Rome ! 0, take us not to Rome ! 

BEATRICE. 

Why not to Rome, dear mother ? There, as here, 

Our innocence is as an armed heel 

To trample accusation. God is there, 

As here, and with his shadow ever clothes 

The innocent, the injured, and the weak ; 

And such are we. Cheer up, dear lady ! lean 

On me ; collect your wandering thoughts. My lord, 

As soon as you have taken some refreshment, 

And had all such examinations made 

Upon the spot, as may be necessary 

To the full understanding of this matter, 

We shall be ready. Mother, will you come ? 

LUCRETIA. 

Ha ! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest 
Self -accusation from our agony ! 
Will Giacomo be there ? Orsino % Marzio ? 
All present ; all confronted ; all demanding 
Each from the other's countenance the thing 
Which is in every heart ! O, misery ! 

{She faints, and is borne out. 



THE CENCI. 



151 



She faints 



SAVELLA. 

an ill appearance this. 



BEATRICE. 

My lord, 
She knows not yet the uses of the world. 
She fears that power is as a beast which grasps 
And loosens not : a snake whose look transmutes 
All things to guilt, which is its nutriment. 



She cannot know how well the supine slaves 
Of blind authority read the truth of things 
When written on a brow of guilelessness : 
She sees not yet triumphant Innocence 
Stand at the judgment-Beat of mortal man, 
A judge and an accuser of the wrong 
Which drags it there. Prepare yourself, my 

lord ; 
Our suite will join yours in the court below. 

[Exeunt. 



ACT V. 



SCENE I. 

An Apartment in Orsino's Palace. 
Enter Orsino and Giacomo. 
GIACOMO. 
Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end ? 
that the vain remorse which must chastise 
Crimes done, had but as loud a voice to warn, 
As its keen sting is mortal to avenge ! 

that the hour when present had cast off 
The mantle of its mystery, and shown 

The ghastly form with which it now returns 
When its scared game is roused, cheering the 

hounds 
Of conscience to their prey ! Alas, alas ! 
It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed, 
To kill an old and hoary-headed father. 

ORSINO. 

It has turned out unluckily, in truth. 

GIACOMO. 

To violate the sacred doors of sleep ; 
To cheat kind nature of the placid death 
Which she prepares for overwearied age ; 
To drag from Heaven an unrepentant soul, 
Which might have quenched in reconciling prayers 
A life of burning crimes — 

ORSINO. 

You cannot say 

1 urged you to the deed. 

GIACOMO. 

0, had I never 
Found in thy smooth and ready countenance 
The mirror of my darkest thoughts ; hadst thou 
Never with hints and questions made me look 
Upon the monster of my thought, until 
It grew familiar to desire — 

0RSIN0. 

'Tis thus 
Men cast the blame of their unprosperous acts 
Upon the abettors of their own resolve ; 
Or any thing but their weak, guilty selves. 
And yet, confess the truth, it is the peril 
In which you stand that gives you this pale 

sickness 
Of penitence ; confess, 'tis fear disguised 
From its own shame that takes the mantle now 
Of thin remorse. What if we yet were safe ? 



GIACOMO. 

How can that be ? Already Beatrice, 
Lucretia, and the murderer, are in prison. 
I doubt not officers are, whilst we speak, 
Sent to arrest us. 

ORSINO. 

I have all prepared 
For instant flight. We can escape even now, 
So we take fleet occasion by the hair. 

GIACOMO. 

Rather expire in tortures, as I may. 
What ! will you cast by self-accusing flight 
Assured conviction upon Beatrice ? 
She who alone, in this unnatural work, 
Stands like God's angel ministered upon 
By fiends ; avenging such a nameless wrong 
As turns black parricide to piety ; 
Whilst we for basest ends — I fear, Orsino, 
While I consider all your words and looks, 
Comparing them with your proposal now, 
That you must be a villain. For what end 
Could you engage in such a perilous crime, 
Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles, 
Even to this gulf ? Thou art no liar ? No, 
Thou art a lie ! Traitor and murderer ! 
Coward and slave ! But no — defend thyself; 

[Drawing. 
Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue 
Disdains to brand thee with. 



Put up your weapon. 
Is it the desperation of your fear 
Makes you thus rash and sudden with your 

friend, 
Now ruined for your sake ? If honest anger 
Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed 
Was but to try you. As for me, I think 
Thankless affection led me to this point, 
From which, if my firm temper could repent, 
I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak, 
The ministers of justice wait below : 
They grant me these brief moments. Now, if you 
Have any word of melancholy comfort 
To speak to your pale wife, 'twere best to pass 
Out at the postern, and avoid them so. 

GIACOMO. 

Oh, generous friend! How canst thou pardon me? 
Would that nrv life could purchase thine ! 






THH CENCl. 



ORSINO. 

That wish 
Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well! 
llear'st thou not stops along the corridor 1 

[llXtt GlACOiMO. 

I'm sorry for it ; but the guards aiv waiting 

At his own gate, and such was my contrivance 

That I might rid mo both of him and thorn. 

1 thought to aot a solemn comedy 

Upon the painted scene of this new world, 

And to attain my own peculiar ends 

By some such plot of mingled good and ill 

As others weave ; but there arose a Power 

Which grasped and snapped the threads of my 

device, 
And turned it to a net of ruin — Ha ! 

[A shout is heard. 
Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad ? 
But I will pass, wrapt in a vile disguise ; 
Rags on my back, and a false innocence 
Upon my face, through the misdeeming crowd, 
Which judges by what seems. 'Tis easy then, 
For a new name, and for a country new, 
And a new life, fashioned on old desires, 
To change the honours of abandoned Rome. 
And these must be the masks of that within, 
Which must remain unaltered. — Oh, I fear 
That what is past will never let me rest ! 
Why, when none else is conscious, but myself, 
Of my misdeeds, should my own heart's contempt 
Trouble me ? Have I not the power to fly 
My own reproaches ? Shall I be the slave 
Of — what ? A word ! which those of this false world 
Employ against each other, not themselves ; 
As men wear daggers not for self-offence. 
But if I am mistaken, where shall I 
Find the disguise to hide me from myself, 
As now I skulk from every other eye ? 

[Exit. 



SCENE II. 

A Hall of Justice. 

Camillo, Judges, etc., are discovered seated ; 
Marzio is led in. 

FIRST JUDGE. 

Accused, do you persist in your denial ? 

I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty ? 

I demand who were the participators 

In your offence ? Speak truth, and the whole truth. 

MARZIO. 

My God ! I did not kill him ; I know nothing ; 
Olimpio sold the robe to me from which 
You would infer my guilt. 

SECOND JUDGE. 

Away with him ! 

FIRST JUDGE. 

Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack's kiss, 
Speak false ? Is it so soft a questioner, 
That you would bandy lovers' talk with it, 
Till it wind out your life and soul ? Away I 

MARZIO. 

Spare me ! 0, spare ! I will confess. 



FIRST JUDGE. 



Then speak. 



MARZIO. 

I strangled him in his sleep. 

FIRST JUDGE. 

Who urged you to it ! 

MARZIO. 

His own son Giacomo, and the young prelate 
Orsino sent me to Petrella ; there 
The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia 
Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I 
And my companion forthwith murdered him. 
Now let me die. 

FIRST JUDGE. 

This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there, 
Lead forth the prisoners. 

Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo, guarded. 
Look upon this man ; 
When did you see him last ? 

BEATRICE. 

We never saw him. 

MARZIO. 

You know me too well, Lady Beatrice. 

BEATRICE. 

I know thee ! How ! where ? when ? 

MARZIO. 

You know 'twas I 
Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes 
To kill your father. When the thing was done, 
You clothed me in a robe of woven gold, 
And bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see. 
You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia, 
You know that what I speak is true. 

[Beatrice advances towards him ; he covers his 
face, and shrinks lack. 

Oh, dart 
The terrible resentment of those eyes 
On the dread earth ! Turn them away from me ! 
They wound : 'twas torture forced the truth. My 

Lords, 
Having said this, let me be led to death. 

BEATRICE. 

Poor wretch, I pity thee : yet stay awhile. 

CAMILLO. 

Guards, lead him not away. 

BEATRICE. 

Cardinal Camillo, 
You have a good repute for gentleness 
And wisdom : can it be that you sit here 
To countenance a wicked farce like this ? 
When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged 
From sufferings which might shake the sternest 

heart, 
And bade to answer, not as he believes, 
But as those may suspect or do desire, 
Whose questions thence suggest their own reply : 
And that in peril of such hideous torments 
As merciful God spares even the damned. Speaknow 
The thing you surely know, which is, that you, 
If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel, 
And you were told, " Confess that you did poison 
Your little nephew : that fair blue-eyed child 
Who was the load-star of your life ;" and though 
All see, since his most swift and piteous death. 
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time, 



THE CENCI. 



103 



And all the things hoped for or done therein, 
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief, 
Yet you would say, " I confess anything" — 
And beg from your tormentors, like that slave, 
The refuge of dishonourable death. 
I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert 
My innocence. 

camillo (much moved). 

What shall we think, my lords % 
Shame on these tears ! I thought the heart was frozen 
Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul 
That she is guiltless. 

JUDGE. 

Yet she must be tortured. 

CAMILLO. 

1 would as soon have tortured mine own nephew 
(If he now lived, he would be just her age ; 
His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes 
Like hers in shape, but blue, and not so deep :) 
As that most perfect image of God's love 
That ever came sorrowing upon the earth. 
She is as pure as speechless infancy ! 

JUDGE. 

Well, be her purity on your head, my lord, 
If you forbid the rack. His Holiness 
Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime 
By the severest forms of law ; nay, even 
To stretch a point against the criminals. 
The prisoners stand accused of parricide, 
Upon such evidence as justifies 
Torture. 

BEATRICE. 

What evidence ? This man's ? 



Even so. 

BEATRICE (to MaRZIO). 

Come near. And who art thou, thus chosen forth 
Out of the multitude of living men, 
To kill the innocent ? 



Thy father's vassal. 



MARZIO. 

I am Marzio, 



BEATRICE. 

Fix thine eyes on mine ; 
Answer to what I ask. 

[Turning to the Judges. 

I prithee mark 
His countenance : unlike bold calumny, 
Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks, 
He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends 
His gaze on the blind earth. 

( To Marzio.) What ! wilt thou say 
That I did murder my own father ? 

MARZIO. 

Oh! 
Spareme! My brain swims round — I cannotspeak — 
It was that horrid torture forced the truth. 
Take me away ! Let her not look on me ! 
I am a guilty miserable wretch ! 
I have said all I know ; now, let me die ! 

BEATRICE. 

My lords, if by my nature I had been 

So stern, as to have planned the crime alleged, 

Which your suspicions dictate to this slave, 



And the rack makes him utter, do you think 

I should have left this two-edged instrument 

Of my misdeed ; this man ; this bloody knife, 

With my own name engraven on the heft, 

Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes, 

For my own death \ That with such horrible need 

For deepest silence, 1 should have neglected 

So trivial a precaution, as the making 

His tomb the keeper of a secret written 

On a thief's memory ? What is his poor life \ 

What are a thousand lives ? A parricide 

Had trampled them like dust ; and see, he lives! 

[Turning to Marzio. 
And thou — 

MARZIO. 

Oh, spare me ! Speak to me no more ! 
That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones, 
Wound worse than torture. 

( To the Judges.) I have told it all ; 
For pity's sake lead me away to death. 

CAMILLO. 

Guards, lead him nearer the lady Beatrice, 
He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf 
From the keen breath of the serenest north. 

BEATRICE. 

Oh, thou who tremblest on the giddy verge 

Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me ; 

So mayst thou answer God with less dismay : 

What evil have we done thee ? I, alas ! 

Have lived but on this earth a few sad years, 

And so my lot was ordered, that a father 

First turned the moments of awakening life 

To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope ; and 

then 
Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul, 
And my untainted fame ; and even that peace 
Which sleeps within the core of the heart's heart- 
But the wound was not mortal ; so my hate 
Became the only worship I could lift 
To our great Father, who in pity and love, 
Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off ; 
And thus his wrong becomes my accusation : 
And art thou the accuser ? If thou hopest 
Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth : 
Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart. 
If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path 
Over the trampled laws of God and man, 
Rush not before thy Judge, and say : " My Maker, 
I have done this and more ; for there was one 
Who was most pure and innocent on earth ; 
And because she endured what never any, 
Guilty or innocent, endured before ; 
Because her wrongs could not be told, nor thought; 
Because thy hand at length did rescue her ; 
I with my words killed her and all her kin." 
Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay 
The reverence living in the minds of men 
Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame ! 
Think what it is to strangle infant pity, 
Cradled in the belief of guileless looks, 
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think 
What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood 
All that which shows like innocence, and is, — 
Hear me, great God ! I swear, most innocent, — 
So that the world lose all discrimination 
Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt, 
And that which now compels thee to reply 
To what I ask : Am I, or am I not 
A parricide ? 



i;>4 



THE CENCI. 



MVRZI0. 

Thou art not ! 



What is this ? 



MARZIO. 

I here declare those whom I did accuse 
Are innocent. 'Tis I alone am guilty. 

JUDGE. 

Drag him away to torments ; let them be 
Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds 
Of the heart's inmost cell. Unbind him not 
Till he confess. 

MAR2I0. 

Torture me as ye will : 
A keener pain has wrung a higher truth 
From my last breath. She is most innocent ! 
Bloodhounds,not men, glut yourselves well with me! 
I will not give you that fine piece of nature 
To rend and ruin. [Exit Marzio, guarded. 

CAMILLO. 

What say ye now, my lords % 

JUDGE. 

Let tortures strain the truth till it be white 
As snow thrice -sifted by the frozen wind. 

CAMILLO. 

Yet stained with blood. 

judge (Jo Beatrice). 

Know you this paper, lady ? 

BEATRICE. 

Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here 
As my accuser ! Ha ! wilt thou be he, 
Who art my judge ? Accuser, witness, judge, 
What, all in one ? Here is Orsino's name ; 
Where is Orsino ? Let his eye meet mine. 
What means this scrawl % Alas ! ye know not what, 
And therefore on the chance that it may be 
Some evil, will ye kill us ? 

Enter an Officer. 
OFFICER. 

Marzio's dead. 

JUDGE. 

What did he say? 

OFFICER. 

Nothing. As soon as we 
Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us, 
As one who baffles a deep adversary ; 
And holding his breath, died. 

JUDGE. 

There remains nothing 
But to apply the question to those prisoners, 
Who yet remain stubborn. 

CAMILLO. 

I overrule 
Further proceedings, and in the behalf 
Of these most innocent and noble persons 
Will use my interest with the Holy Father. 

JUDGE. 

Let the Pope's pleasure then be done. Meanwhile 
Conduct these culprits each to separate cells ; 
And be the engines ready : for this night, 
If the Pope's resolution be as grave, 
Pious, and just as once, I'll wring the truth 
Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan. 

[Exeunt. 



SCENE III. 

The Cell of a Prison. 

Beatrice is discovered asleep on a couch. 

Enter Bernardo. 

BERNARDO. 

How gently slumber rests upon her face, 

Like the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent, 

Closing in night and dreams, and so prolonged. 

After such torments as she bore last night, 

How light and soft her breathing comes. Ah, me ! 

Methinks that I shall never sleep again. 

But I must shake the heavenly dew of rest 

From this sweet folded flower, thus — wake ; awake ; 

What, sister, canst thou sleep % 

Beatrice {awaking). 

I was just dreaming 
That we were all in Paradise. Thou knowest 
This cell seems like a kind of Paradise 
After our father's presence. 

BERNARDO. 

Dear, dear sister, 
Would that thy dream were not a dream ! 0, God ! 
How shall I tell ? 

BEATRICE. 

What would'st thou tell, sweet brother 1 

BERNARDO. 

Look not so calm and happy, or, even whilst 
I stand considering what I have to say, 
My heart will break. 

BEATRICE. 

See now, thou mak'st me weep : 
How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child, 
If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say. 

BERNARDO. 

They have confessed ; they could endure no more 
The tortures — 

BEATRICE. 

Ha ! What was there to confess ! 
They must have told some weak and wicked He 
To flatter their tormentors. Have they said 
That they were guilty ? O white innocence, 
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide 
Thine awful and serenest countenance 
From those who know thee not ! 

Enter Judge, with Lucretia and Giacomo, guarded. 
Ignoble hearts ! 
For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least 
As mortal as the limbs through which they pass, 
Are centuries of high splendour laid in dust ? 
And that eternal honour which should live 
Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame, 
Changed to a mockery and a by-word ? What ! 
Will you give up these bodies to be dragged 
At horses' heels, so that our hair should sweep 
The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd, 
Who, that they may make our calamity 
Their worship and their spectacle, will leave 
The churches and the theatres as void 
As their own hearts ? Shall the light multitude 
Fling at their choice, curses or faded pity, 
Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse, 
Upon us as we pass, to pass away, 



THE CENCI. 



155 



And leave — what memory of our having been % 

Infamy, blood, terror, despair ? thou, 

Who wert a mother to the parentless, 

Kill not thy child ! Let not her wrongs kill thee ! 

Brother, lie down with me upon the rack, 

And let us each be silent as a corpse ; 

It soon will be as soft as any grave. 

'Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear 

Makes the rack cruel. 

GIACOMO. 

They will tear the truth 
Even from thee at last, those cruel pains : 
For pity's sake say thou art guilty now. 

LUCRETIA. 

0, speak the truth ! Let us all quickly die ; 
And after death, God is our judge, not they ; 
He will have mercy on us. 

BERNARDO. 

If indeed 
It can be true, say so, dear sister mine ; 
And then the Pope will surely pardon you, 
And all be well. 

JUDGE. 

Confess, or I will warp 
Your limbs with such keen tortures — 

BEATRICE. 

Tortures ! Turn 
The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel ! 
Torture your dog, that he may tell when last 
He lapped the blood his master shed — not me ! 
My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart, 
And of the soul ; ay, of the inmost soul, 
Which weeps within tears as of burning gall 
To see, in this ill world where none are true. 
My kindred false to their deserted selves. 
And with considering all the wretched life 
Which I have lived, and its now wretched end ; 
And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth 
To me or mine ; and what a tyrant thou art, 
And what slaves these; and what a world we make, 
The oppressor and the oppressed — such pangs 

compel 
My answer. What is it thou wouldst with me ? 

JUDGE. 

Art thou not guilty of thy father's death ? 

BEATRICE. 

Or wilt thou rather tax high-judging God 

That he permitted such an act as that 

Which I have suffered, and which he beheld ; 

Made it unutterable, and took from it 

All refuge, all revenge, all consequence, 

But that which thou hast called my father's death ? 

Which is or is not what men call a crime, 

Which either I have done, or have not done ; 

Say what ye will. I shall deny no more. 

If ye desire it thus, thus let it be, 

And so an end of all. Now do your will ; 

No other pains shall force another word. 

JUDGE. 

She is convicted, but has not confessed. 

Be it enough. Until their final sentence 

Let none have converse with them. You, young 

Linger not here ! [lord, 

BEATRICE. 

0, tear him not away ! 



JUDGE. 

Guards ! do your duty. 

Bernardo {embracing Beatrice). 

Oh ! would ye divide 
Body from soul ? 

officer. 
That is the headsman's business. 
[Exeunt all but Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo. 

GIACOMO. 

Have I confessed ? Is it all over now ? 
No hope ? No refuge 1 weak, wicked tongue, 
Which hast destroyed me, would that thou hadst been 
Cut out and thrown to dogs first ! To have killed 
My father first, and then betrayed my sister ; 
Ay, thee ! the one thing innocent and pure 
In this black, guilty world, to that which I 
So well deserve ! My wife ! my little ones ! 
Destitute, helpless ; and I — Father ! God ! 
Canst thou forgive even the unforgiving, 
When their full hearts break thus, thus ? — 

[Covers his face and weeps. 

LUCRETIA. 

0, my child ! 
To what a dreadful end are we all come ! 
Why did I yield I Why did I not sustain 
Those torments ? Oh ! that I were all dissolved 
Into these fast and unavailing tears, 
Which flow and feel not ! 

BEATRICE. 

What 'twas weak to do, 
'Tis weaker to lament, once being done ; 
Take cheer ! The God who knew my wrong, and 
Our speedy act the angel of his wrath, [made 

Seems, and but seems, to have abandoned us. 
Let us not think that we shall die for this. 
Brother, sit near me ; give me your firm hand, 
You had a manly heart. Bear up ! bear up ! 
Oh ! dearest lady, put your gentle head 
Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile : 
Your eyes look pale, hollow, and overworn, 
With heaviness of watching and slow grief. 
Come, I will sing you some low, sleepy tune, 
Not cheerful, nor yet sad ; some dull old thing, 
Some outworn and unused monotony, 
Such as our country gossips sing and spin, 
Till they almost forget they live : he down ! 
So ; that will do. Have I forgot the words ? 
Faith ! they are sadder than I thought they were. 

SONG. 

False friend, wilt thou smile or weep 
When my life is laid asleep ? 
Little cares for a smile or a tear, 
The clay-cold corpse upon the bier ; 

Farewell ! Heigh ho ! 

What is this whispers low ? 
There is a snake in thy smile, my dear ; 
And bitter poison within thy tear. 

Sweet sleep ! were death like to thee, 
Or if thou couldst mortal be, 
I would close these eyes of pain ; 
When to wake ? Never again. 

O World ! farewell ! 

Listen to the passing bell ! 
It says, thou and I must part. 
With a light and a heavy heart. 

[The scene closes. 



156 



THE CENCI. 



SCENE IV. 

A Hall of the Prison. 

Enter Camillo and Bernardo. 

CAMILLO. 

The Pope is stern ; not to be moved or bent. 

He looked as calm and keen as is the engine 

Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself 

From aught that it inflicts ; a marble form, 

A rite, a law, a custom ; not a man. 

He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick 

Of his machinery, on the advocates 

Presenting the defences, which he tore 

And threw behind, muttering with hoarse, harsh 

voice : 
" Which among ye defended their old father 
Killed in his sleep 1 " Then to another : " Thou 
Dost this in virtue of thy place ; 'tis well." 
i He turned to me then, looking deprecation, 

And said these three words, coldly : " They must 
die." 

BERNARDO. 

And yet you left him not ? 

CAMILLO. 

I urged him still ; 
Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong 
Which prompted your unnatural parent's death. 
And he replied, " Paolo Santa Croce 
Murdered his mother yester evening, 
And he is fled. Parricide grows so rife, 
That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young 
Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs. 
Authority, and power, and hoary hair 
Are grown crimes capital. You are my nephew, 
You come to ask their pardon ; stay a moment ; 
Here is their sentence ; never see me more 
Till, to the letter, it be all fulfilled." 

BERNARDO. 

0, God, not so ! I did believe indeed 

That all you said was but sad preparation 

For happy news. O, there are words and looks 

To bend the sternest purpose ! Once I knew them, 

Now I forget them at my dearest need. 

What think you if I seek him out, and bathe 

His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears ? 

Importune him with prayers, vexing his brain 

With my perpetual cries, until in rage 

He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample 

Upon my prostrate head, so that my blood 

May stain the senseless dust on which he treads, 

And remorse waken mercy ? I will do it ! 

O, wait till I return ! [Rushes out. 

CAMILLO. 

Alas ! poor boy ! 
A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray 
To the deaf sea. 

Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo, guarded. 
BEATRICE. 

I hardly dare to fear 
That thou bring'st other news than a just pardon. 

CAMILLO. 

May God in heaven be less inexorable 

To the Pope's prayers, than he has been to mine. 

Here is the sentence and the warrant. 



BEATRICE (wildly). 



Oh, 



My God ! Can it be possible I have 

To die so suddenly I So young to go 

Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground ! 

To be nailed down into a narrow place ; 

To see no more sweet sunshine ; hear no more 

Blithe voice of living thing ; muse not again 

Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost ! 

How fearful ! to be nothing ! Or to be — 

What ? O, where am I % Let me not go mad ! 

Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts ! If there 

should be 
No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world ; 
The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world ! 
If all things then should be — my father's spirit, 
His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me ; 
The atmosphere and breath of my dead life ! 
If sometimes, as a shape more like himself, 
Even the form which tortured me on earth, 
Masked in grey hairs and wrinkles, he should come, 
And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix 
His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down ! 
For was he not alone omnipotent 
On Earth, and ever present 1 even though dead, 
Does not his spirit live in all that breathe, 
And work for me and mine still the same ruin, 
Scorn, pain, despair ? Who ever yet returned 
To teach the laws of death's untrodden realm ? 
Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now, 
0, whither, whither ? 

LUCRETIA. 

Trust in God's sweet love, 
The tender promises of Christ : ere night 
Think we shall be in Paradise. 

BEATRICE. 

'Tis past ! 
Whatever comes, my heart shall sink no more. 
And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill : 
How tedious, false, and cold seem all things ! I 
Have met with much injustice in this world ; 
No difference has been made by God or man, 
Or any power moulding my wretched lot, 
'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me. 
I am cut off from the only world I know, 
From light, and life, and love, in youth's sweet prime. 
You do well telling me to trust in God ; 
I hope I do trust in him. In whom else 
Can any trust ? And yet my heart is cold. 

[During the latter speches Giacomo has retired con- 
versing with Camillo, who now goes out ,• Giacomo 
advances. 

GIACOMO. 

Know you not, mother — sister, know you not ! 
Bernardo even now is gone to implore 
The Pope to grant our pardon. 

LUCRETIA. 

Child, perhaps 
It will be granted. We may all then live 
To make these woes a tale for distant years : 
O, what a thought ! It gushes to my heart 
Like the warm blood. 

BEATRICE. 

Yet both will soon be cold : 
0, trample out. that thought ! Worse than despair, 
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope : 
It is the only ill which can find place 



THE CENCI. 



157 



Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour 
Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost 
That it should spare the eldest flower of spring : 
Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch 
Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free ; 
Now stench and blackness yawns, like death. 0, 
With famine, or wind-walking pestilence, [plead 
Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man ! 
Cruel, cold, formal man ; righteous in words, 
In deeds a Cain. No, mother, we must die : 
Since such is the reward of innocent lives ; 
Such the alleviation of worst wrongs. 
And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men, 
Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears 
To death as to life's sleep ; 'twere just the grave 
Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death, 
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms ! 
Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom, 
And rock me to the sleep from which none wake. 
Live ye, who live, subject to one another 
As we were once, who now — 

Bernardo rushes in. 
BERNARDO. 

0, horrible ! 
That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in 
Even till the heart is vacant and despairs, [prayer, 
Should all be vain ! The ministers of death 
Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw 
Blood on the face of one — what if 'twere fancy ? 
Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth 
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off 
As if 'twere only rain. 0, life ! 0, world ! 
Cover me ! let me be no more ! To see 
That perfect mirror of pure innocence 
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good, 
Shivered to dust ! To see thee, Beatrice, 
Who made all lovely thou didst look upon — 
Thee, light of life — dead, dark ! while I say, sister, 
To hear I have no sister ; and thou, mother, 
Whose love was a bond to all our loves — 
Dead I The sweet bond broken ! 



Enter Camillo and Guards. 

They come ! Let me 
Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves 
Are blighted — white — cold. Say farewell, before 
Death chokes that gentle voice ! let me hear 
You speak ! 

BEATRICE. 

Farewell, my tender brother. Think 
Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now : 
And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee 
Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair, 
But tears and patience. One thing more, my child : 
For thine own sake be constant to the love 
Thou bearest us ; and to the faith that I, 
Though wrapt in a strange cloud of crime and 

shame, 
Lived ever holy and unstained. And though 
111 tongues shall wound me, and our common 

name 
Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow 
For men to point at as they pass, do thou 
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind 
Of those who perhaps love thee in their graves. 
So mayest thou die as I do ; fear and pain 
Being subdued. Farewell ! Farewell ! Farewell ! 

BERNARDO. 

I cannot say farewell ! 

CAMILLO. 

0, Lady Beatrice ! 

BEATRICE. 

Give yourself no unnecessary pain, 
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie 
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair 
In any simple knot : ay, that does well. 
And yours I see is coming down. How often 
Have we done this for one another ! now 
We shall not do it any more. My lord, 
We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very weiL 



158 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON THE CENCI. 



NOTE ON THE CENCI. BY THE EDITOR. 



The soi't of mistake that Shelley made, as to 
the extent of his own genius and powers, which 
led him deviously at first, but lastly into the direct 
track that enabled him fully to develop them, is a 
curious instance of his modesty of feeling, and of 
the methods which the human mind uses at once 
to deceive itself, and yet, in its very delusion, to 
make its way out of error into the path which 
nature has marked out as its right one. He often 
incited me to attempt the writing a tragedy — he 
conceived that I possessed some dramatic talent, 
and he was always most earnest and energetic in 
his exhortations that I should cultivate any talent 
I possessed, to the utmost. I entertained a truer 
estimate of my powers ; and, above all, though at 
that time not exactly aware of the fact, I was far 
too young to have any chance of succeeding, even 
moderately, in a species of composition, that 
requires a greater scope of experience in, and 
sympathy with, human passion than could then 
have fallen to my lot, or than any perhaps, except 
Shelley, ever possessed, even at the age of twenty- 
six, at which he wrote the Cenci. 

On the other hand, Shelley most erroneously 
conceived himself to be destitute of this talent. 
He believed that one of the first requisites was 
the capacity of forming and following up a story or 
plot. He fancied himself to be defective in this por- 
tion of imagination — it was that which gave him least 
pleasure in the writings of others — though he laid 
great store by it, as the proper framework to sup- 
port the sublimest efforts of poetry. He asserted 
that he was too metaphysical and abstract — too 
fond of the theoretical and the ideal, to succeed as 
a tragedian. It perhaps is not strange that I 
shared this opinion with himself, for he had hitherto 
shown no inclination for, nor given any specimen 
of his powers in framing and supporting the in- 
terest of a story, either in prose or verse. Once 
or twice, when he attempted such, he had speedily 
thrown it aside, as being even disagreeable to him 
as an occupation. 

The subject he had suggested for a tragedy was 
Charles I., and he had written to me, " Remem- 
ber, remember Charles I. I have been already 
imagining how you would conduct some scenes. 



The second volume of St. Leon begins with this 
proud and true sentiment, ' There is nothing which 
the human mind can conceive which it may not 
execute.' Shakspeare was only a human being." 
These words were written in 1818, while we were 
in Lombardy, when he little thought how soon a 
work of his own would prove a proud comment on 
the passage he quoted. When in Rome, in 1819, 
a friend put into our hands the old manuscript 
account of the story of the Cenci. We visited 
the Colonna and Doria" palaces, where the portraits 
of Beatrice were to be found ; and her beauty cast 
the reflection of its own grace over her appalling 
story. Shelley's imagination became strongly ex- 
cited, and he urged the subject tome as one fitted 
for a tragedy. More than ever I felt my incom- 
petence ; but I entreated him to write it instead ; 
and he began and proceeded swiftly, urged on by 
intense sympathy with the sufferings of the human 
beings whose passions, so long cold in the tomb, 
he revived, and gifted with poetic language. This 
tragedy is the only one of his works that he com- 
municated to me during its progress. We talked 
over the arrangement of the scenes together. I 
speedily saw the great mistake we had made, and 
triumphed in the discovery of the new talent 
brought to fight from that mine of wealth, never, 
alas! through his untimely death, worked to its 
depths — his richly-gifted mind. 

We suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the 
loss of our eldest child, who was of such beauty 
and promise as to cause him deservedly to be the 
idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the 
world, anxious for a time to escape a spot associ- 
ated too intimately with his presence and loss *. 
Some friends of ours were residing in the neigh- 
bourhood of Leghorn, and we took a small house, 
Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town 
and Monte Nero, where we remained during the 

* Such feelings haunted him when, in the Cenci, he 
makes Beatrice speak to Cardinal Camillo of 

that fair blue-eyed child, 
"Who was the load-star of your life. 
And say — 

All see, since his most piteous death, 
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time, 
And all the things hoped for, or done therein, 
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON THE CENCI. 



U><) 



summer. Our villa was situated in the midst of a 
podere ; the peasants sang as they worked beneath 
our windows, during the heats of a very hot sea- 
son, and in the evening the water-wheel creaked as 
the process of irrigation went on, and the fire-flies 
flashed from among the myrtle hedges : — nature 
was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified 
by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had 
never before witnessed. 

At the top of the house, there was a sort of 
terrace. There is often such in Italy, generally 
roofed. This one was very small, yet not only 
roofed but glazed ; this Shelley made his study ; 
it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, 
and commanded a view of the near sea. The 
storms that sometimes varied our day showed 
themselves most picturesquely as they were driven 
across the ocean ; sometimes the dark lurid clouds 
dipped towards the waves, and became water- 
spouts, that churned up the waters beneath, as 
they were chased onward, and scattered by the 
tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight 
and heat made it almost intolerable to every 
other ; but Shelley basked in both, and his 
health and spirits revived under their influence. 
In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of The 
Cenci. He was making a study of Calderon at the 
time, reading his best tragedies with an accom- 
plished lady living near us, to whom his letter 
from Leghorn was addressed during the following 
year. He admired* Calderon, both for his poetry 
and his dramatic genius ; but it shows his judg- 
ment and originality, that, though greatly struck 
by his first acquaintance with the Spanish poet, 
none of his peculiarities crept into the composition 
of The Cenci ; and there is no trace of his new 
studies, except in that passage to which he himself 
alludes, as suggested by one in El Purgatorio de 
San Patricio. 

Shelley wished The Cenci to be acted. He was 
not a play -goer, being of such fastidious taste that 
he was easily disgusted by the bad filling up of the 
inferior parts. While preparing for our departure 
from England, however, he saw Miss O'Neil 
several times ; she was then in the zenith of her 
glory, and Shelley was deeply moved by her im- 
personation of several parts, and by the graceful 
sweetness, the intense pathos, and sublime vehe- 
mence of passion she displayed. She was often in 
his thoughts as he wrote, and when he had finished, 
he became anxious that his tragedy should be 
acted, and receive the advantage of having this 
accomplished actress to fill the part of the heroine. 
With this view he wrote the following letter to a 
friend in London : — 



" The object of the present letter is to ask a favour 
of you. I have written a tragedy on a story well 
known in Italy, and, in my conception, eminently 
dramatic. I have taken some pains to make my 
play fit for representation, and those who have 
already seen it judge favourably. It is written 
without any of the peculiar feelings and opinions 
which characterise my other compositions ; I 
having attended simply to the impartial develop- 
ment of such characters as it is probable the per- 
sons represented really were, together with the 
greatest degree of popular effect to be produced 
by such a development. I send you a translation 
of the Italian MS. on which my play is founded ; 
the chief circumstance of which I have touched 
very delicately ; for my principal doubt as to 
whether it would succeed, as an acting play, hangs 
entirely on the question as to whether any such a 
thing as incest in this shape, however treated, 
would be admitted on the stage. I think, however, 
it will form no objection, considering, first, that 
the facts are matter of history, and, secondly, the 
peculiar delicacy with which I have treated it *. 

" I am exceedingly interested in the question 
of whether this attempt of mine will succeed or not. 
I am strongly inclined to the affirmative at present; 
founding my hopes on this, that as a composition 
it is certainly not inferior to any of the modern 
plays that have been acted, with the exception of 
' Remorse ;' that the interest of the plot is incre- 
dibly greater and more real, and that there is no- 
thing beyond what the multitude are contented to 
believe that they can understand, either in imagery, 
opinion, or sentiment. I wish to preserve a com- 
plete incognito, and can trust to you that, what- 
ever else you do, you will at least favour me on 
this point. Indeed this is essential, deeply essential 
to its success. After it had been acted and suc- 
cessfully, (could I hope for such a thing) I would 
own it if I pleased, and use the celebrity it might 
acquire to my own purposes. 

" What I want you to do, is to procure for me 
its presentation at Covent Garden. The principal 
character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for Miss 
O'Neil, and it might even seem to have been writ- 
ten for her, (God forbid that I should see her play 
it — it would tear my nerves to pieces) and in all 
respects it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The 
chief male character I confess I should be very 

* In speaking of his mode of treating this main inci- 
dent, Shelley said that it might be remarked that, in the 
course of the play, he had never mentioned expressly 
Cenci's worst crime. Every one knew what it must he, 
hut it was never imaged in words — the nearest allusion 
to it being that portion of Cenci's curse, beginning, 
" That if she have a child," &c. 



160 



RELATION OF THE DEATH OF THE CENCI FAMILY. 



unwilling that any one but Kean should play — 
that is impossible, ami I must be contented with 
an inferior actor." 

The play was accordingly sent to Mr. Harris. 
He pronounced the subject to be so objectionable, 
that he could not even submit, the part to Miss 
O'Neil for perusal, but expressed his desire that 
the author would write a tragedy on some other 
subject, which he would gladly accept. Shelley 
printed a small edition at Leghorn, to insure its 
correctness ; as he was much annoyed by the 
many mistakes that crept into his text, when 
distance prevented him from correcting the press. 

Universal approbation soon stamped The Cenci 
as the best tragedy of modern times. Writing 
concerning it, Shelley said : « I have been cautious 
to avoid the introducing faults of youthful com- 
position; diffuseness, a profusion of inapplicable 
imagery, vagueness, generality, and, as Hamlet 
says, words, words." There is nothing that is not 
purely dramatic throughout ; and the character of 
Beatrice, proceeding from vehement struggle to 
horror, to deadly resolution, and lastly, to the 
elevated dignity of calm suffering joined to pas- 
sionate tenderness and pathos, is touched with 
hues so vivid and so beautiful, that the poet seems 
to have read intimately the secrets of the noble 
heart imaged in the lovely countenance of the un- 
fortunate girl. The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. 
It is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim 



RELATION 



THE DEATH OF THE FAMILY OF THE CENCI. 



proud comparison not only with any contemporary, 
but preceding poet. The varying feelings of 
Beatrice are expressed with passionate, heart- 
reaching eloquence. Every character has a voice 
that echoes truth in its tones. It is curious, to 
one acquainted with the written story, to mark 
the success with which the poet has inwoven the 
real incidents of the tragedy into his scenes, and 
yet, through the power of poetry, has obliterated 
all that would otherwise have shown too harsh or 
too hideous in the picture. His success was a 
double triumph ; and often after he was earnestly 
entreated to write again in a style that commanded 
popular favour, while it was not less instinct with 
truth and genius. But the bent of his mind went 
the other way ; and even when employed on sub- 
jects whose interest depended on character and 
incident, he would start off in another direction, 
and leave the delineations of human passion, which 
he could depict in so able a manner, for fantastic 
creations of his fancy, or the expression of those 
opinions and sentiments with regard to human 
nature and its destiny ; a desire to diffuse which, 
was the master passion of his soul. 

Finding among my papers the account of the 
case of the Cenci family, translated from the old 
Roman MS., written at the period when the dis- 
astrous events it commemorates occurred, I ap- 
pend it here, as the perusal must interest every 
reader. 



The most wicked life which the Roman nobleman, 
Francesco Cenci, led while he lived in this world, not 
only occasioned his own ruin and death, but also that 
of many others, and brought down the entire destruc- 
tion of his house. This nobleman was the son of 
Monsignore Cenci, who, having been treasurer during the 
pontificate of Pius V., left immense wealth to Francesco, 
his only son. From this inheritance alone he enjoyed 
an income of 160,000 crowns, and he increased his 
fortune by marrying an exceedingly rich lady, who 
died after she had given birth to seven unfortunate 
children. He then contracted a second marriage with 
Lueretia Petroni, a lady of a noble Roman family ; 
but he had no children by her. Sodomy was the least, 
and atheism the greatest, of the vices of Francesco ; as 
is proved by the tenor of his life ; for he was three 
times accused of sodomy, and paid the sum of 100,000 



crowns to government, in commutation of the punish- 
ment rightfully awarded to this crime : and concerning 
his religion, it is sufficient to state, that he never fre- 
quented any church ; and although he caused a small 
chapel, dedicated to the apostle St. Thomas, to be 
built in the court of his palace, his intention in so doiug 
was to bury there all his children, whom he cruelly 
hated. He had driven the eldest of these, Giacomo, 
Cristofero, and Rocco, from the paternal mansion, 
while they were yet too young to have given him any 
real cause of displeasure. He sent them to the uni- 
versity of Salamanca, but, refusing to remit to them 
there the money necessary for their maintenance, they 
desperately returned home. They found that this 
change only increased their misery, for the hatred and 
contempt of their father towards them was so aggra- 
vated, that he refused to dress or maintain them, so that 



RELATION OF THE DEATH OF THE CENCI FAMILY. 



J 61 



they were obliged to have recourse to the Pope, who 
caused Cenci to make them a fit allowance, with which 
they withdrew from his house. 

The third imprisonment of Francesco for his accus- 
tomed crime of sodomy, occurred at this time, and his 
sons took occasion to supplicate the Pope to punish 
their father, and to remove so great a monster from 
his family. The Pope, though before inclined to con- 
demn Francesco to the deserved punishment of death, 
would not do it at the request of his sons, but permitted 
him again to compound with the law, by paying the 
accustomed penalty of 100,000 crowns. The hatred 
of Francesco towards his sons was augmented by this 
proceeding on their parts ; he cursed them ; and often 
also struck and ill-treated his daughters. The eldest 
of these, being unable any longer to support the cruelty 
of her father, exposed her miserable condition to the 
Pope, and supplicated him either to marry her, accord- 
ing to his choice, or to shut her up in a monastery, that 
by any means she might be liberated from the cruel op- 
pression of her parent. Her prayer was heard, and the 
Pope, in pity to her unhappiness, bestowed her in mar- 
riage toSignore Carlo Gabrielli, one of the first gentle- 
men of the city of Gabbio,and obliged Francesco to give 
her a fitting dowry of some thousand crowns. 

Francesco fearing that his youngest daughter would, 
when she grew up, follow the example of her sister, 
bethought himself how to hinder this design, and for 
that purpose shut her up alone in an apartment of the 
palace, where he himself brought her food, so that no 
one might approach her ; and imprisoned her in this 
manner for several months, often inflicting on her blows 
with a stick. 

In the meantime ensued the death of two of his sons, 
Rocco and Cristofero — one being assassinated by a 
surgeon, and the other by Paolo Corso, while he was 
attending mass. The inhuman father showed every 
sign of joy on hearing this news, saying that nothing 
would exceed his pleasure if all his children died, and 
that when the grave should receive the last he would, 
as a demonstration of joy, make a bonfire of all that he 
possessed. And on the present occasion, as a further 
sign of his hatred, he refused to pay the smallest sum 
towards the funeral expenses of his murdered sons. 

Francesco carried his wicked debauchery to such an 
excess, that he caused girls (of whom he constantly 
kept anumberin his house), and alsocommon courtezans, 
to sleep in the bed of his wife, and often endeavoured, 
by force and threats, to debauch his daughter Beatrice, 
who was now grown up, and exceedingly beautiful — 7 



Beatrice, finding it impossible to continue to live in 
so miserable a manner, followed the example of her 
sister; she sent a well-written supplication to the Pope, 
imploring him to exercise his authority in withdrawing 
her from the violence and cruelty of her father. — But 
this petition, which might, if listened to, have saved 
this unfortunate girl from an early death, produced 
not the least effect. It was afterwards found among 
the collection of memorials, and it is pretended that it 
never came before the Pope. 

Francesco, having discovered this attempt on the 
part of his daughter, became more enraged, and re- 
doubled his tyranny ; confining with rigour not only 
Beatrice, but also his wife. At length, these unhappy 
women, finding themselves without hope of relief, 
driven by desperation, resolved to plan his death. 

t The details here axe horrible, and unfit for publication. 



The Palace Cenci was sometimes visited oy a Mon- 
signore Guerra — a young man of handsome person and 
attractive manners, and of that facile character which 
might easily be induced to become a partner in any 
action, good or evil, as it might happen. His coun 
tenance was pleasing, and his person tall and well pro- 
portioned ; he was somewhat in love with Beatrice, 
and well acquainted with the turpitude of Francesco's 
character, and was hated by him on account of the 
familiar intercourse which subsisted between him and 
the children of this unnatural father : for this reason 
he timed his visits with caution, and never came to 
the house but when he knew that Francesco was 
absent. He was moved to a lively compassion of the 
state of Lucretia aud Beatrice, who often related their 
increasing misery to him, and his pity was for ever fed 
and augmented by some new tale of tyranny and cruelty. 
In one of these conversations Beatrice let fall some 
words which plainly indicated that she and her mother- 
in-law contemplated the murder of their tyrant, and 
Monsignore Guerra not only showed approbation of their 
design, but also promised to co-operate with them in 
their undertaking. Thus stimulated, Beatrice com- 
municated the design to her eldest brother, Giacomo, 
without whose concurrence it was impossible that they 
should succeed. This latter was easily drawn into 
consent, since he was utterly disgusted with his father, 
who ill-treated him, and refused to allow him a suffi- 
cient support for his wife and children. 

The apartments of Monsignore Guerra was the place 
in which the circumstances of the crime about to be 
committed were concerted and determined on. Here 
Giacomo, with the understanding of his sister and 
mother-in-law, held various consultations, aud finally 
resolved to commit the murder of Francesco to two of 
his vassals, who had become his inveterate enemies ; 
one called Marzio, and the other Olympio : the latter, 
by means of Francesco, had been deprived of his post 
as castellan of the Rock of Petrella. 

It was already well known that Francesco, with the 
permission of Signor Marzio di Colonna, baron of that 
feud, had resolved to retire to Petrella, and to pass the 
summer there with his family. Some banditti of the 
kingdom of Naples were hired, and were instructed to 
lie in wait in the woods about Petrella, and, upon advice 
being given to them of the approach of Francesco, to 
seize upon him. This scheme was so arranged that, 
although the robbers were only to seize and take off 
Francesco, yet that his wife and children should not be 
suspected of being accomplices in the act. But the 
affair did not succeed ; for, as the banditti were not 
informed of his approach in time enough, Francesco 
arrived safe and sound at Petrella. They were obliged 
therefore to form some new scheme to obtain the end 
which every day made them more impatient to effect ; 
for Francesco still persisted in his wicked conduct. 
He being an old man, above seventy years of age, never 
quitted the castle ; therefore no use could be made of 
the banditti, who were still secreted in the environs. 
It was determined, therefore, to accomplish the murder 
in Francesco's own house. 

Marzio and Olympio were called to the castle ; and 
Beatrice, accompanied by her mother-in-law, conversed 
with them from a window during the night-time, when 
her father slept. She ordered them to repair to Mon- 
signore Guerra with a note, in which they were desired 
to murder Francesco, in consideration of a reward of a 
thousand crowns : a third to be given them before the 
act, by Monsignore Guerra, and the other two thirds . 
by the ladies themselves, after the deed should be ac- 



1(»2 



KKLATION OF THE DEATH OF THE CENCI FAMILY. 



complished. I laving consented to this agreement, they 
wove secretly admitted into the castle the 8 th of Septem- 
ber, 1598; but because this day was the anniversary of 

the birth of the Blessed Virgin, the Signora Lueretia, held 
back by her veneration for so holy a time, desired, with 
the consent of her danghter-in-law, that the execution 
of the murder should be put off until the following day. 
They dexterously mixed opium with the drink of Fran- 
ceseo. who. upon going to bed, was soon oppressed by 
a deep sleep. About midnight his daughter herself 
led the two assassins into the apartment of her father, 
and left them there that they might execute the deed 
they had undertaken, and retired to a chamber close 
by, where Lueretia remained also, expecting the return 
of the murderers, and the relation of their success. 
Soon after the assassins entered, and told the ladies 
that pity had held them back, and that they could not 
overcome their repugnance to kill in cold blood a poor 
sleeping old man. These words filled Beatrice with 
anger, and after having bitterly reviled them as cowards 
and traitors, she exclaimed, " Since you have not 
courage enough to murder a sleeping man, I will kill 
my father myself; but your lives shall not be long 
secure." The assassins, hearing this short but terrible 
threat, feared that if they did not commit the deed, 
the tempest would burst over their own heads, took 
courage, and re-entered the chamber where Francesco 
slept, and with a hammer drove a nail into his head, 
making it pass by his eye, and another they drove 
into his neck. After a few struggles the unhappy 
Francesco breathed his last. The murderers departed, 
after having received the remainder of the promised 
reward ; besides which, Beatrice gave Marzio a mantle 
trimmed with gold. After this the two ladies, after 
drawing out the two nails, enveloped the body in a fine 
sheet, and carried it to an open gallery that overhung 
a garden, and had underneath an elder- tree : from 
thence they threw it down, so that it might be believed 
that Francesco, attending a call of nature, was travers- 
ing this gallery, when, being only supported by feeble 
beams, it had given way r , and thus had lost his life. 

And so indeed was it believed the next day, when 
the feigned lamentations of Lueretia and Beatrice, who 
appeared inconsolable, spread the news of Francesco's 
death. He received an honourable burial ; and his 
family, after a short stay at the castle, returned to Rome 
to enjoy the fruits of their crime. They passed some 
time there in tranquillity ; but Divine Justice, which 
would not allow so atrocious a wickedness to remain 
hid and unpunished, so ordered it, that the Court of 
Naples, to which the account of the death of Cenci 
was forwarded, began to entertain doubts concerning 
the mode by which he came by it, and sent a com- 
missary to examine the body and to take informations. 
Among other things, this man discovered a circumstance 
to the prejudice of the family of the deceased : it ap- 
peared that the day after the event of her father's 
death, Beatrice had given to wash a sheet covered with 
bluod, saying : * * * * 

* » * * * 

These informations were instantly forwarded to the 
Court of Rome; but, nevertheless, several months 
passed without any step being taken in disfavour 
of the Cenci family ; and, in the mean time, the 
youngest son of Francesco died, and two only remained 
of the five that he had had ; namely, Giacomo and Ber- 
nardo. Monsignore Guerra, having heard of the notifi- 
cation made by the Court of Naples to that of Rome, 
fearing that Marzio and Olympio might fall into the 
hands of justice, and be induced to confess their crime 



suddenly hired men to murder them, but succeeded 
only in assassinating Olympio at the city of Terni. 
Marzio, who had escaped this misfortune, soon incurred 
that of being imprisoned at Naples, where he confessed 
the whole ; and instantly, while the arrival of Marzio 
at Rome from Naples was expected, Giacomo and 
Bernardo were arrested, and imprisoned in the Corte 
Save] la, and Lueretia and Beatrice were confined in 
their own house under a good guard ; but afterwards 
they were also conducted to the prison where were 
the brothers. They were here examined, and all con- 
stantly denied the crime, and particularly Beatrice, who 
also denied having given to Marzio the mantle trimmed 
with gold, of winch mention was before made; and 
Marzio, overcome and moved by the presence of mind 
and courage of Beatrice, retracted all that he had de- 
posed at Naples, and, rather than again confess, ob- 
stinately died under his torments. 

There not being sufficient proof to justify putting 
the Cenci family to the torture, they were all trans- 
ferred to Castello, where they remained several months 
in tranquillity. But, for their misfortune, one of the 
murderers of Olympio at Terni fell into the hands of 
justice ; he confessed that he had been hired to this 
deed by Monsignore Guerra, who had also commissioned 
him to assassinate Marzio. Fortunately for this pre- 
late, he received prompt information of the testimony 
given against him, and was able to hide himself for a 
time, and to plan his escape, which was very diificult ; 
for his stature, the fairness and beauty of his counte- 
nance, and his light hair, made him conspicuous for 
discovery. He changed his dress for that of a charcoal- 
man, blackening his face, and shaving his head ; and 
thus disguised, driving two asses before him, with some 
bread and onions in his hands, he passed freely through 
Rome, under the eyes of the ministeis of justice, who 
sought him everywbere ; and, without being recognised 
by any one, passed out of one of the gates of the city, 
where, after a short time, he was met by the sbirri, 
who were searching the country, and passed unknown 
by them, not without suffering great fear at his risk 
of being discovered and arrested : by means of this 
ingenious disguise he effected his escape to a safe 
country. 

The flight of Monsignore Guerra, joined to the con- 
fession of the murderer of Olympio, aggravated the 
other proofs so much, that the Cenci were re-transferred 
from Castello to Corte Savella, and were condemned 
to be put to the torture. The two sons sank vilely 
under their torments, and became convicted; Lueretia, 
being of advanced age, having completed her fiftieth 
year, and being of a fat make, was not able to resist 
the torture of the cord — [The original is wanting.] 
— But the Signora Beatrice, being young, lively, and 
strong, neither with good nor ill treatment, with 
menaces, nor fear of torture, would allow a single word 
to pass her lips which might inculpate her ; and even, 
by her lively eloquence, confused the judges who 
examined her. The Pope, being informed of all that 
passed by Signor Ulysse Moraci, the judge employed 
in this affair, became suspicious that the beauty of 
Beatrice had softened the mind of this judge, and 
committed the cause to another, who found out another 
mode of torment, called the torture of the hair ; and 
when she was already tied under this torture, he 
brought before her her mother-in-law and brothers. 
They began altogether to exhort her to confess ; saying, 
that since the crime had been committed, they 
must suffer the punishment. Beatrice, after some 
resistance, said, " So you all wish to die, and to dis- 



RELATION OF THE DEATH OF THE CENCI FAMILY. 



\G-A 



grace and ruin our house ? This is not right ; but 

since it so pleases you, so let it be :" — and turning to 
the jailors, she told them to unbind her, and that all 
the examinations might be brought to her, saying, 
" That which I ought to confess, that -will I confess ; 
that to which I ought to assent, to that will I assent ; 
and that which I ought to deny, that will I deny :" 
—and in this manner she was convicted without having 
confessed. They were then all unbound ; and, since 
it was now five months since all had met, they wished 
to eat together that day : but, three days afterwards, 
they were again divided — the ladies being left in the 
Corte Savclla, and the brothers being transferred to 
the dungeons of the Tordinona. 

The Pope, after having seen all the examinations, 
and the entire confessions, ordered that the delinquents 
should be drawn through the streets at the tails of 
horses, and afterwards decapitated. Many cardinals 
and princes interested themselves, and entreated that 
at least they might be allowed to draw up their de- 
fence. The Pope at first refused to comply, replying 
with severity, and asking these intercessors what de- 
fence had been allowed to Francesco, when he had been 
so barbarously murdered in his sleep ; but afterwards 
he yielded to allow them twenty-five days' time. The 
most celebrated Roman advocates undertook to defend 
the criminals ; and, at the end of the appointed time, 
brought their writings to the Pope. The first that 
spoke was the advocate Nicolas di Angelis ; but the 
Pope interrupted him angrily in the middle of his dis- 
course, saying, that he greatly wondered that there 
existed in Rome children unnatural enough to kill 
their father ; and that there should be found advocates 
depraved enough to defend so horrible a crime. These 
words silenced all except the advocate Farinacci ; who 
said, " Holy Father, we have not fallen at your feet to 
defend the atrocity of the crime, but to save the life 
of the innocent, when your holiness will deign to hear 
us." The Pope listened patiently to him for four 
hours, and then, taking the writings, dismissed them. 
The advocate Altieri, who was the last to depart, turned 
back, and, throwing himself at the feet of the Pope, 
said, that his office as advocate to the poor would not 
allow him to refuse to appear in this affair ; and the 
Pope replied that he was not surprised at the part that 
he, but at that which the others had taken. Instead 
of retiring to rest, he spent the whole night in study- 
ing the cause with the Cardinal di San Marcello — 
noting with great care the most exculpating passages 
of the writing of the advocate Farinacci ; with which 
he became so satisfied, that he gave hope of granting 
a pardon to the criminals : for the crimes of the father 
and children were contrasted and balanced in this 
writing ; and to save the sons, the greater guilt was 
attributed to Beatrice ; and thus, by saving the mother- 
in-law, the daughter might the more easily escape, who 
was dragged, as it were, to the committing so enormous 
a crime by the cruelty of her father. The Pope, there- 
fore, that the criminals might enjoy the benefit of time, 
ordered them again to be confined in secret. But 
since, by the high dispensation of Providence, it was 
resolved that they should incur the just penalty of 
parricide, it so happened, that at this time Paolo Santa 
Croce killed his mother in the town of Subiaco, because 
she refused to give up her inheritance to him. And 
the Pope, upon the occurrence of this second crime of 
this nature, resolved to punish those guilty of the first; 
and the more so, because the matricide Santa Croce 
had escaped from the vengeance of the law by flight. 
The Pope returned to Monte Cavallo the 6 th of May, 



that he might consecrate the next morning, in the 
neighbouring church of S. Maria degli Angeli, the 
Cardinal Diveristiana, appointed by him to be bishop 
of Olumbre, on the 3d of May of the same year, 1599 : 
on the 10th of May he called into his presence Mon- 
signore Ferrante Taverna, governor of Rome, and said 
to him, " I give up into your hands the Cenci cause, 
that you may as soon as you can execute the justice 
allotted to them." As soon as the governor arrived 
at his palace, he communicated the sentence to, and 
held a council with, the criminal judge, concerning 
the manner of death to be inflicted on the criminals. 
Many nobles instantly hastened to the palaces of the 
Quirinal and the Vatican, to implore the grace of at 
least a private death for the ladies, and the pardon of the 
innocent Bernardo ; and, fortunately, they were in time 
to save the life of this youth, because many hours were 
necessarily employed in preparing the scaffold over the 
bridge of S. Angelo, and then in waiting for the Con- 
fraternity of Mercy, who were to accompany the con- 
demned to the place of suffering. 

The sentence was executed the morning of Satur- 
day, the 11th of May. The messengers charged 
with the communication of the sentence, and the 
Brothers of the Conforteria, were sent to the several 
prisons at five the preceding night; and at six the 
sentence of death was communicated to the un- 
happy brothers while they were placidly sleeping. 
Beatrice on hearing it broke into a piercing lament- 
ation, and into passionate gesture, exclaiming, " How 
is it possible, O my God ! that I must so suddenly 
die?" Lucretia, as prepared, and already resigned to 
her fate, listened without terror to the reading of this 
terrible sentence ; and with gentle exhortations induced 
her daughter-in-law to enter the chapel with her ; and 
the latter, whatever excess she might have indulged 
in on the first intimation of a speedy death, so much 
the more now courageously supported herself, and gave 
every one certain proofs of a humble resignation. 
Having requested that a notary might be allowed to 
come to her, and her request being granted, she made 
her will, in which she left 15,000 crowns to the 
Fraternity of the Sacre Stimmate ; and willed that all 
her dowry should be employed in portioning for 
marriage fifty maidens : and Lucretia, imitating the 
example of her daughter-in-law, ordered that she should 
be buried in the church of S. Gregorio at Monte Celio, 
with 32.000 crowns for charitable uses, and made 
other legacies ; after which they passed some time in 
the Conforteria, reciting psalms and litanies and other 
prayers, with so much fervour, that it well appeared 
that they were assisted by the peculiar grace of God. At 
eight o'clock they confessed, heard mass, and received 
the holy communion. Beatrice, considering that it 
was not decorous to appear before the judges and on 
the scaffold with their splendid dresses, ordered two 
dresses, one for herself, and the other for her mother- 
in law, made in the manner of the nuns — gathered up, 
and with long sleeves of black cotton for Lucretia, and 
of common silk for herself; with a large cord girdle. 
When these dresses came, Beatrice rose, and, turning 
to Lucretia — "Mother," said she, "the hour of our 
departure is drawing near, let us dress therefore in 
these clothes, and let us mutually aid one another in 
this last office." Lucretia readily complied with this 
invitation, and they dressed, each helping the other, 
showing the same indifference and pleasure as if they 
were dressing for a feast. 

The Company of Mercy arrived soon after at the 
prisons of the Tordinona ; and while they were waiting 

M 2 



104 



RELATION OF THE DEATH OF THE CENCI FAMILY. 



below in the street with the crucifix, until the con- 
demned should descend, an accident happened, which 
gave rise to such a tumult among the immense crowd 
there collected, that there was danger of much disorder. 
It thus happened ; some foreign gentlemen, who 
were posted at a high window, inadvertently threw 
down a flower-pot which was outside the window, 
which falling on one of the brothers of the Order of 
Mercy, mortally wounded him. This caused a dis- 
turbance in the crowd ; and those who were too far 
off to know the cause, took flight, and falling one over 
the other, several were w T ounded. When the tumult 
was calmed, the brothers Giacomo and Bernardo de- 
scended to the door of the prison, near which oppor- 
tunely happened to be some fiscal officers, who, going 
up to Bernardo, told him that through the clemency 
of the sovereign pontiff, his life was spared to him, with 
this condition, that he should be present at the death 
of his relations. A scarlet mantle tiimmed with gold, 
in which he had at first been conducted to prison, was 
given him, to envelop him. Giacomo was already on 
the car, when the placet of the Pope arrived, freeing 
him from the severer portion of the punishment added to 
the sentence, and ordering that it should be executed 
only by the hammer and quartering. 

The funereal procession passed through the Via dell' 
Orso, by the Apollinara, thence through the Piazza 
Navona; from the church of S. Pantalio to the Piazza 
Pollarola, through the Campo di Fiori, S. Carlo a 
Castinari, to the Arco de 1 Conte Cenci; proceeding, 
it stopped under the Palace Cenci, and then finally 
rested at the Corte Savella, to take the two ladies. 
When these arrived, Lucretia remained last, dressed 
in black, as has been described, with a veil of the same 
colour, which covered her as far as her girdle : Bea- 
trice was beside her, also covered by a veil : they wore 
velvet slippers, with silk roses and gold fastenings ; and, 
instead of manacles, their wrists were bound by a silk 
cord, which was fastened to their girdles in such a 
manner as so give them almost the free use of their 
hands. Each had in her left hand the holy sign of 
benediction, and in the right a handkerchief, with which 
Lucretia wiped her tears, and Beatrice the perspiration 
from her forehead. Being arrived at the place of 
punishment, Bernardo was left on the scaffold, and the 
others were conducted to the chapel. During this 
dreadful separation, this unfortunate youth, reflecting 
that he was soon going to behold the decapitation of 
his nearest relatives, fell down in a deadly swoon, from 
which, however, he was at last recovered, and seated 
opposite the block. The first that came forth to die 
was Lucretia, who, being fat, found difficulty in placing 
herself to receive the blow. The executioner taking 
off her handkerchief, her neck was discovered, which 
was still handsome, although she was fifty years of age. 
Blushing deeply, she cast her eyes down, and then, 
casting them up to heaven, full of tears, she exclaimed, 
" Behold, dearest Jesus, this guilty soul about to 
appear before thee — to give an account of its acts, 
mingled with many crimes. When it shall appear 
before thy Godhead, I pray thee to look on it with an 
eye of mercy, and not of justice." She then began to 
recite the psalm Miserere mei Deus, and placing her 
neck under the axe, the head was struck from her 
body while she was repeating the second verse of 
this psalm, at the words et secundum multitudinem. 
When the executioner raised the head, the populace 
saw with wonder that the countenance long retained 
its vivacity, until it was wrapt up in a black handker- 
chief, and placed in a corner of the scaffold. While 



the scaffold was being arranged for Beatrice, and whilst 
the Brotherhood returned to the chapel for her, the 
balcony of a shop filled with spectators fell, and five of 
those underneath were wounded, so that two died a few 
days after. Beatrice, hearing the noise, asked the execu- 
tioner if her mother had died well, and being replied that 
she had, she knelt before the crucifix, and spoke thus : 
— "Be thou everlastingly thanked, O my most gracious 
Saviour, since, by the good death of my mother, thou 
hast given me assurance of thy mercy towards me." 
Then, rising, she courageously and devoutly walked 
towards the scaffold, repeating by the way several 
prayers, with so much fervour of spirit, that all who 
heard her shed tears of compassion. Ascending the 
scaffold, while she arranged herself, she also turned her 
eyes to heaven, and thus prayed : — " Most beloved 
Jesus, who, relinquishing thy diviuity, becamest a man; 
and didst through love purge my sinful soul also of its 
original sin with thy precious blood ; deign, I beseech 
thee, to accept that which I am about to shed at thy 
most merciful tribunal, as a penalty which may cancel 
my many crimes, and spare me a part of that punish- 
ment justly due to me." Then she placed her head 
under the axe, which at one blow was divided from 
her body, as she was repeating the second verse of 
the psalm De profundis, at the words fiant aures tuce; 
the blow gave a violent motion to her body, and dis- 
composed her dress. The executioner raised the head 
to the view of the people, and in placing it in the coffin 
placed underneath, the cord by which it was suspended 
slipped from his hold, and the head fell to the ground, 
shedding a great deal of blood, which was wiped up 
with water and sponges. 

On the death of his sister, Bernardo again fainted : 
the most efficacious remedies were for some time use- 
lessly employed upon him ; and it was believed by all 
that his second swoon, having fouud him already over- 
come and without strength, had deprived him of life. 
At length, after the lapse of a quarter of an hour, he 
came to himself, and by slow degrees recovered the use 
of his senses. Giacomo was then conducted to the 
scaffold, and the executioner took from him the mourn- 
ing cloke which enveloped him. He fixed his eyes 
on Bernardo, and then, turning, addressed the people 
with a loud voice : " Now that I am about to present 
myself before the Tribunal of infallible Truth, I swear 
that if my Saviour, pardoning me my faults, shall 
place in the road to salvation, I will incessantly pray 
for the preservation of his Holiness, who has spared me 
the aggravation of punishment but too much due to 
my enormous crime, and has granted life to my brother 
Bernardo, who is most innocent of the guilt of parri- 
cide, as I have constantly declared in all my examin- 
ations. It only afflicts me in these my last moments, 
that he should have been obliged to be present at so 
fatal a scene : but since, O my God, it has so pleased 
thee, fiat voluntas tua." After speaking thus, he 
knelt down : the executioner blinded his eyes, and tied 
his legs to the scaffold, gave him a blow on the temple 
with a leaded hammer, cut off his head, and cut his 
body into four pieces, which were fixed on the hooks 
of the scaffolding. 

When the last penalty of justice was over, Ber- 
nardo was reconducted to the prison of the Tordinona, 
where he was soon attacked by a burning fever ; he 
was bled and received other remedies, so that in the 
end he recovered his health, though not without great 
suffering. The bodies of Lucretia and Beatrice were 
left at the end of the bridge until the evening, illumin- 
ated by two torches, and surrounded by so great a con- 



RELATION OF THE DEATH OF THE CENCT FAMILY. 



165 



course of people, that it was impossible to cross the 
bridge. An hour after dark, the body of Beatrice was 
placed in a coffin, covered by a black velvet pall, 
richly adorned with gold : garlands of flowers were 
placed, one at her head, and another at her feet ; and 
the body was strewed with flowers. It was accompa- 
nied to the church of S. Peter in Montorio by the 
Brotherhood of the Order of Mercy, and followed by 
many Franciscan monks, with great pomp and innume- 
rable torches ; she was there buried before the high 
altar, after the customary ceremony had been performed. 
By reason of the distance of the church from the bridge, 
it was four hours after dark before the ceremony was 
finished. Afterwards the body of Lucretia, accompa- 
nied in the same manner, was carried to the church 
of S. Gregorio upon the Celian Hill ; where, after 
the ceremony, it was honourably buried. 

Beatrice was rather tall, of a fair complexion ; and 
she had a dimple on each cheek, which, especially 
when she smiled, added a grace to her lovely counte- 
nance that transported every one who beheld her. Her 
hair appeared like threads of gold ; and, because they 
were extremely long, she used to tie it up, and, when 
afterwards she loosened it, the splendid ringlets dazzled 
the eyes of the spectator. Her eyes were of a deep 
blue, pleasing, and full of fire. To all these beauties 
she added, both in words and actions, a spirit and a 
majestic vivacity that captivated every one. She was 
twenty years of age when she died. 

Lucretia was as tall as Beatrice, but her full make 
made her appear less : she was also fair, and so fresh 
cotnplexioned, that at fifty, which was her age when 
»he died, she did not appear above thirty. Her hair 



was black, and her teeth regular and white to an ex. 
traordinary degree. 

Giacomo was of a middle size ; fair but ruddy ; and 
with black eyebrows : affable in his nature, of good 
address, and well skilled in every science, and in all 
knightly exercises. He was not more than twenty- 
eight years of age when he died. 

Lastly, Bernardo so closely resembled Beatrice in 
complexion, features, and everything else, that if they 
had changed clothes the one might easily have been 
taken for the other. His mind also seemed formed 
in the same model as that of his sister; and at the 
time of her death he was six-and- twenty years old. 

He remained in the prison of Tordinona until the 
month of September of the same year, after which 
time, at the intercession of the Most Venerable Grand 
Brotherhood of the Most Holy Crucifix of St. Mar- 
cellus, he obtained the favour of his liberty upon paying 
the sum of 25,000 crowns to the Hospital of the Most 
Holy Trinity of Pilgrims. Thus he, as the sole rem- 
nant of the Cenci family, became heir to all their 
possessions. He is now married, and has a son named 
Cristofero. 

The most faithful portrait of Beatrice exists in the 
Palace of the Villa Pamfili, without the gate of San 
Pancrazio : if any other is to be found in the Palazza 
Cenci, it is not shown to any one ; — so as not to renew 
the memory of so horrible an event. 

This was the end of this family : and until the 
time when this account is put together it has not been 
possible to find the Marquess Paolo Santa Croce ; but 
there is a rumour that he dwells in Brescia, a city of 
the Venetian states. 



END OF THE CENCI. 



HELLAS; 

8 itortcal 23rama. 



MANTIS EIM' E20AnN 'ATClNflN. 



CEdip. Colon. 



TO HIS EXCELLENCY 

PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO, 

LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA, 

THE DRAMA OF HELLAS 

IS INSCRIBED, 

AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP OF 

THE AUTHOR. 



Pisa, November 1, 1821. 



PREFACE. 

The Poem of " Hellas," written at the suggestion of 
the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and 
derives its interest (should it he found to possess any) 
solely from the intense sympathy which the Author 
feels with the cause he would celebrate. 

The subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of 
being treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have 
called this poem a drama, from the circumstance of its 
being composed in dialogue, the licence is not greater 
than that which has been assumed by other poets, who 
have called their productions epics, only because they 
have been divided into twelve or twenty-four books. 

The Persso of iEschylus afforded me the first model 
of my conception, although the decision of the glorious 
contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended, 
forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes 
and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, 
contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric 
pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of 
futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such 
figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest 
the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of 
the cause of civilisation and social improvement. 

The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, 
go inartificial that I doubt whether, if recited on the 
Thespian waggon to an Athenian village at the Diony- 
siaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. 
I shall bear with equanimity any punishment greater 
than the loss of such a reward which the Aristarchi of 
the hour may think fit to inflict. 

The only goat-song which I have yet attempted has, 
I confess, in spite of the unfavourable nature of the 
subject, received a greater and a more valuable portion 
of applause than I expected, or than it deserved. 

Common fame is the only authority which I can 
allege for the details which form the basis of the poem, 



and I must trespass upon the forgiveness of my reader*, 
for the display of newspaper erudition to which I have 
been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the conclusion of 
the war, it will be impossible to obtain an account of it 
sufficiently authentic for historical materials ; but 
poets have their privilege, and it is unquestionable that 
actions of the most exalted courage have been per- 
formed by the Greeks — that they have gained more 
than one naval victory, and that their defeat in TVal- 
lachia was signalised by circumstances of heroism more 
glorious even than victory. 

The apathy of the rulers of the civilised world, to 
the astonishing circumstance of the descendants of that 
nation to which they owe their civilisation — rising as 
it were from the ashes of their ruin, is something 
perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows 
of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, 
our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root 
in Greece. But for Greece — Rome the instructor, the 
conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors, would 
have spread no illumination with her arms, and we 
might still have been savages and idolaters ; or, what is 
worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and 
miserable state of social institutions as China and 
Japan possess. 

The human form and the human mind attained to a 
perfection in Greece which has impressed its image on 
those faultless productions, whose very fragments are 
the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses 
which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of 
manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and 
delight mankind until the extinction of the race. 

The modern Greek is the descendant of those 
glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses 
to figure to itself as belonging to our kind ; and he 
inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of 
conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If 
in many instances he is degraded by moral and political 



HELLAS. 



167 



slavery to the practice of the basest vices it engenders 
and that below the level of ordinary degradatiou ; let 
us reflect that the corruption of the best produces the 
worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to 
a peculiar state of social institution may be expected 
to cease, as soon as that relation is dissolved. In fact, 
the Greeks, since the admirable novel of " Anastatius" 
could have been a faithful picture of their manners, 
have undergone most important changes ; the flower of 
their youth, returning to their country from the 
universities of Italy, Germany, and France, have com- 
municated to their fellow-citizens the latest results of 
that social perfection of which their ancestors were the 
original source. The university of Chios contained 
before the breaking out of the revolution, eight hundred 
students, and among them several Germans and 
Americans. The munificence and energy of many of 
the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the reno- 
vation of their country, with a spirit and a wisdom 
which has few examples, is above all praise. 

The English permit their own oppressors to act 
according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish 
tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot 
of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, 
of Christianity, and civilisation. 



Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece ; 
and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, 
and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other, 
until one or both fall into its net. The wise and 
generous policy of England would have consisted in 
establishing the independence of Greece, and in main- 
taining it both against Russia and the Turks ; — but 
when was the oppressor generous or just ? 

The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is 
tranquil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from 
the abuses which its unnatural and feeble government 
are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of blood 
and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous 
race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The Avorld 
waits only the news of a revolution of Germany, to 
see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its 
supineness, precipitated into the ruin from which they 
shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of man- 
kind know their enemy, when they impute the 
insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which 
they tremble throughout the rest of Europe ; and that 
enemy well knows the power and cunning of its oppo- 
nents, and watches the moment of their approaching 
weakness and inevitable division, to wrest the bloody 
sceptres from their grasp. 



Mahmcd, 
Hassan, 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 

Daood, 

Ahasueros, a Jew. 
Chorus of Greek Captive Women. 
Messengers, Slaves, and Attendants. 



Scene — Constantinople. 
Time — Sunset. 



Scene, a Terrace, on the Seraglio. 

Mahjuud (sleeping), an Indian slave sitting beside his 
Couch. 

CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN. 

We strew these opiate flowers 

On thy restless pillow, — 
They were stript from Orient bowers, 
By the Indian billow. 
Be thy sleep 
Calm and deep, 
Like theirs who fell — not ours who weep ! 

INDIAN. 

Away, unlovely dreams ! 

Away, false shapes of sleep ! 
Be his, as Heaven seems, 
Clear, and bright, and deep ! 
Soft as love, and calm as death, 
Sweet as a summer night without a breath. 

CHORUS. 

Sleep, sleep ! our song is laden 

With the soul of slumber ; 
It was sung by a Samian maiden, 
Whose lover was of the number 
Who now keep 
That calm sleep 
Whence none may wake, where none shall weep. 



INDIAN. 

I touch thy temples pale ! 

I breathe my soul on thee ! 
And could my prayers avail, 
All my joy should be 
Dead, and I would live to weep, 
So thou might'st win one hour of quiet sleep. 

CHORUS. 

Breathe low, low, 
The spell of the mighty mistress now ! 
When Conscience lulls her sated snake, 
And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. 
Breathe low, low, 
The words, which, like secret fire, shall flow 
Through the veins of the frozen earth — low, low 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Life may change, but it may fly not ; 
Hope may vanish, but can die not ; 
Truth be veiled, but still it burnetii ; 
Love repulsed, — but it returneth ! 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Yet were life a charnel, where 
Hope lay coffined with Despair f 
Yet were truth a sacred lie, 
Love were lust — 



168 



HELLAS. 



SEMICHORUS I. 

If Liberty 
Lent not life its soul of light, 
Hope its iris of delight, 
Truth its prophet's robe to wear, 
Love its power to give and bear. 



In the great morning of the world, 
The spirit of God with might unfurled 
The flag of Freedom over Chaos, 

And all its banded anarchs fled, 
Like vultures frighted from Imaus, 

Before an earthquake's tread. — 
So from Time's tempestuous dawn 
Freedom's splendour burst and shone : — 
Thermopylae and Marathon 
Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted, 

The springing Fire. — The winged glory 
On Philippi half-alighted, 

Like an eagle on a promontory. 
Its unwearied wings could fan 
The quenchless ashes of Milan. 
From age to age, from man to man 

It lived ; and lit from land to land 

Florence, Albion, Switzerland. 
Then night fell ; and, as from night, 
Re-assuming fiery flight, 
From the West swift Freedom came, 

Against the course of heaven and doom, 
A second sun arrayed in flame, 

To burn, to kindle, to illume. 
From far Atlantis its young beams 
Chased the shadows and the dreams. 
France, with all her sanguine steams, 

Hid, hut quenched it not ; again 

Through clouds its shafts of glory rain 

From utmost Germany to Spain. 
As an eagle fed with morning 
Scorns the embattled tempest's warning, 
When she seeks her aerie hanging 

In the mountain-cedar's hair, 
And her brood expect the clanging 

Of her wings through the wild air, 
Sick with famine ; — Freedom, so 
To what of Greece remaineth now 
Returns ; her hoary ruins glow 
Like orient mountains lost in day ; 

Beneath the safety of her wings 
Her renovated nurselings play, 

And in the naked lightnings 
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. 
Let Freedom leave, where'er she flies, 
A Desert, or a Paradise ; 

Let the beautiful and the brave 

Share her glory, or a grave. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

With the gifts of gladness 
Greece did thy cradle strew ; 

SEMICHORUS II. 

With the tears of sadness 

Greece did thy shroud bedew ; 

SEMICHORUS I. 

With an orphan's affection 

She followed thy bier through time ! 



SEMICHORUS n. 

And at thy resurrection 

Re-appeareth, like thou, sublime ! 

SEMICHORUS I. 

If Heaven should resume thee, 
To Heaven shall her spirit ascend ; 

SEMICHORUS II. 

If Hell should entomb thee. 
To Hell shall her high hearts bend. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

If Annihilation— 



SEMICHORUS II. 

Dust let her glories be ; 
And a name and a nation 

Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee ! 

INDIAN. 

His brow grows darker — breathe not — move not 1 
He starts — he shudders ; — ye that love not, 
With your panting loud and fast 
Have awakened him at last. 

mahmud {starting from his sleep). 
Man the Seraglio-guard ! make fast the gate. 
What ! from a cannonade of three short hours ? 
'Tis false ! that breach towards the Bosphorus 
Cannot be practicable yet — Who stirs ? 
Stand to the match ; that when the foe prevails, 
One spark may mix in reconciling ruin 
The conqueror and the conquered ! Heave the tower 
Into the gap — wrench off the roof. 

Enter Hassan. 

Ha ! what ! 
The truth of day lightens upon my dream, 
And I am Mahmud still. 



Is strangely moved. 



HASSAN. 

Your Sublime Highness 



MAHMUD. 

The times do cast strange shadows 
On those who watch and who must rule their course, 
Lest they, being first in peril as in glory, 
Be whelmed in the fierce ebb : — and these are of 
Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me [them. 
As thus from sleep into the troubled day ; 
It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, 
Leaving no figure upon memory's glass. 
Would that — no matter. Thou didst say thou 
A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle [knewest 

Of strange and secret and forgotten things. 
I bade thee summon him : — 'tis said his tribe 
Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams. 



The Jew of whom I spake is old, — so old 

He seems to have outlived a world's decay ; 

The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean 

Seem younger still than he ; his hair and beard 

Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow ; 

His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries 

Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct 

With light, and to the soul that quickens them 

Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift 

To the winter wind : — but from his eye looks forth 



HELLAS. 



A life of unconsumed thought, which pierces 
The present and the past, and the to-come. 
Some say that this is he whom the great prophet 
Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery, 
Mocked with the curse of immortality. 
Some feign that he is Enoch ; others dream 
He was pre-adamite, and has survived 
Cycles of generation and of ruin. 
The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence, 
And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh, 
Deep contemplation, and unwearied study, 
In years outstretched beyond the date of man, 
May have attained to sovereignty and science 
Over those strong and secret things and thoughts 
Which others fear and know not. 



I would talk 



With this old Jew. 



HASSAN. 

Thy will is even now 
Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern 
'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible 
Than thou or God ! He who would question him 
Must sail alone at sun-set, where the stream 
Of ocean sleeps around those foamless isles 
When the young moon is westering as now, 
And evening airs wander upon the wave ; 
And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle, 
Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow 
Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water, 
Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud, 
Ahasuerus ! and the caverns round 
Will answer, Ahasuerus ! If his prayer 
Be granted, a faint meteor will arise, 
Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind 
Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest, 
And with the wind a storm of harmony 
Unutterably sweet, and pilot him 
Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus : 
Thence, at the hour and place and circumstance 
Fit for the matter of their conference, 
The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare, 
Win the desired communion — but that shout 

Bodes 

[A shout within. 

MAHMUD. 

Evil, doubtless ; like all human sounds. 
Let me converse with spirits. 



HASSAN. 

That shout 

MAHMUD. 

This Jew whom thou hast summoned — 



again. 



Will be here — 

MAHMUD. 

When the omnipotent hour, to which are yoked 
He, I, and all things, shall compel — enough. 
Silence those mutineers — that drunken crew 
That crowd about the pilot in the storm. 
Ay ! strike the foremost shorter by a head ! 
They weary me, and I have need of rest. 
Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have 
The worship of the world, but no repose. 

[Exeunt severally. 



CHORUS. 

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 

From creation to decay, 
Like the bubbles on a river, 

Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 
But they are still immortal 
Who, through birth's orient portal, 
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, 
Clothe their unceasing flight 
In the brief dust and light 
Gathered around their chariots as they go ; 
New shapes they still may weave, 
New Gods, new laws receive, 
Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last 
On Death's bare ribs had cast. 

A power from the unknown God ; 

A Promethean conqueror came ; 
Like a triumphal path he trod 
The thorns of death and shame. 
A mortal shape to him 
Was like the vapour dim 
Which the orient planet animates with light j 
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, 
Like blood-hounds mild and tame, 
Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight. 
The moon of Mahomet 
Arose, and it shall set : 
While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon 
The cross leads generations on. 

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep 

From one whose dreams are paradise, 
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, 
And day peers forth with her blank eyes : 

So fleet, so faint, so fair, 
The Powers of earth and air 
Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem : 
Apollo, Pan, and Love, 
And even Olympian Jove 
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. 
Our hills, and seas, and streams, 
Dispeopled of their dreams, 
Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, 
Wailed for the golden years. 

Enter Mahmud, Hassan, D^ood, and others. 
MAHMUD. 

More gold ? our ancestors bought gold with victory, 
And shall I sell it for defeat ? 



DAOOD. 



The Janizars 



Clamour for pay. 



MAHMUD. 

Go ! bid them pay themselves 
With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian 

virgins 
Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may 

enjoy ? 
No infidel children to impale on spears ? 
No hoary priests after that Patriarch 
Who bent the curse against bis country's heart, 
Which clove his own at last ? Go ! bid them kill : 
Blood is the seed of gold. 

DAOOD. 

It has been sown, 
And yet the harvest to the sickle-men 
Is as a grain to each. 



170 



HELLAS. 



MAHMUD. 

Then take this signet, 
Unlock the seventh chamber, in which lie 
The treasures of victorious Solyman. 
An empire's spoils stored for a day of ruin. 
spirit of my sires ! is it not come ? 
The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep ; 
But these, who spread their feast on the red earth, 
Hunger for gold, which fills not. — See them fed ; 
Then lead them to the rivers of fresh death. 

{Exit Daood. 
Oh ! miserable dawn, after a night 
More glorious than the day which it usurped ! 
0, faith in God ! 0, power on earth ! O, word 
Of the great Prophet, whose overshadowing wings 
Darkened the thrones and idols of the west, 
Now bright ! — For thy sake cursed be the hour, 
Even as a father by an evil child, 
When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph 
From Caucasus to white Ceraunia ! 
Ruin above, and anarchy below ; 
Terror without, and treachery within ; 
The chalice of destruction full, and all 
Thirsting to drink ; and who among us dares 
To dash it from his lips ? and where is Hope ? 

HASSAN. 

The lamp of our dominion still rides high ; 

One God is God — Mahomet is his Prophet. 

Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits 

Of utmost Asia, irresistibly 

Throng, like full clouds at the Scirocco's cry, 

But not like them to weep their strength in tears; 

They have destroying lightning, and their step 

Wakes earthquake, to consume and overwhelm, 

And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus, 

Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen 

With horrent arms, and lofty ships, even now, 

Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge, 

Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala 

The convoy of the ever- veering wind. 

Samos is drunk with blood ; — the Greek has paid 

Brief victory with swift loss and long despair. 

The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far 

When the fierce shout of Allah-ilia- Allah ! 

Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind, 

Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock 

Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm. 

So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day ! 

If night is mute, yet the returning sun 

Kindles the voices of the morning birds ; 

Nor at thy bidding less exultingly 

Than birds rejoicing in the golden day, 

The Anarchies of Africa unleash 

Their tempest-winged cities of the sea, 

To speak in thunder to the rebel world. 

Like sulphureous clouds half -shattered by the storm, 

They sweep the pale ^Egean, while the Queen 

Of Ocean, bound upon her island throne, 

Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons, 

Who frown on Freedom, spare a smile for thee : 

Russia still hovers, as an eagle might 

Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane 

Hang tangled in inextricable fight, 

To stoop upon the victor ; for she fears 

The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine : 

But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave 

Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war, 

Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy, 



And howl upon their limits ; for they see 
The panther Freedom fled to her old cover, 
Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood 
Crouch around. What Anarch wears a crown or 

mitre, 
Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold, 
Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy 

foes ? 
Our arsenals and our armories are full ; 
Our forts defy assaults ; ten thousand cannon 
Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour 
Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city ; 
The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale 
The Christian merchant, and the yellow Jew 
Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth. 
Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds, 
Over the hills of Anatolia, 
Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry 
Sweep ; — the far-flashing of their starry lances 
Reverberates the dying light of day. 
We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law; 
But many-headed Insurrection stands 
Divided in itself, and soon must fall. 

MAHMUD. 

Proud words, when deeds come short, are season- 
able; 
Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned 
Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud 
Which leads the rear of the departing day, 
Wan emblem of an empire fading now ! 
See how it trembles in the blood-red air, 
And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent, 
Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above, 
One star with insolent and victorious light 
Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams, 
Like arrows through a fainting antelope, 
Strikes its weak form to death. 



Even as that moon 



Renews itself - 



MAHMUD. 

Shall we be not renewed ! 
Far other bark than ours were needed now 
To stem the torrent of descending time : 
The spirit that lifts the slave before its lord 
Stalks through the capitals of armed kings, 
And spreads his ensign in the wilderness ; 
Exults in chains ; and when the rebel falls, 
Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust ; 
And the inheritors of earth, like beasts 
When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear 
Cower in their kingly dens — as I do now. 
What were Defeat, when Victory must appal ? 
Or Danger, when Security looks pale ? 
How said the messenger — who from the fort 
Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle 
Of Bucharest ? — that — 

HASSAN. 

Ibrahim's cimeter 
Drew with its gleam swift victory from heaven, 
To burn before him in the night of battle — 
A fight and a destruction. 

MAHMUD. 

Ay ! the day 
Was ours : but how \ — 



HELLAS. 



171 



HASSAN. 

The light Wallachians, 
The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies, 
Fled from the glance of our artillery 
Almost before the thunder-stone alit ; 
One half the Grecian army made a bridge 
Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead ; 
The other— 

MAHMUD. 

Speak — tremble not — 

HASSAN. 

Islanded 
By victor myriads, formed in hollow square 
With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung 
The deluge of our foaming cavalry ; [back 

Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines. 
Our baffled army trembled like one man 
Before a host, and gave them space ; but soon, 
From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed, 
Kneading them down with fire and iron rain. 
Yet none approached ; till, like a field of corn 
Under the hook of the swart sickle-man, 
The bands, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead, 
Grew weak and few. Then said the Pacha, " Slaves, 
Render yourselves — they have abandoned you — 
What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid % 
We grant your lives." — " Grant that which is thine 

own," 
Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died ! 
Another — " God, and man, and hope abandon me; 
But I to them and to myself remain 
Constant; " he bowed his head, and his heart burst. 
A third exclaimed, " There is a refuge, tyrant, 
Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not 

harm, 
Shouldst thou pursue ; there we shall meet again." 
Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm, 
The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment 
Among the slain — dead earth upon the earth ! 
So these survivors, each by different ways, 
Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable, 
Met in triumphant death ; and when our army 
Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame 
Held back the base hyenas of the battle 
That feed upon the dead and fly the living, 
One rose out of the chaos of the slain ; 
And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit 
Of the old saviours of the land we rule 
Had lifted in its anger, wandering by ; 
Or if there burned within the dying man 
Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith 
Creating what it feigned ; — I cannot tell : 
But he cried, " Phantoms of the free, we come ! 
Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike 
To dust the citadels of sanguine kings, 
And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, 
And thaw their frost-work diadems like dew ; — 
O ye who float around this clime, and weave 
The garment of the glory which it wears ; 
Whose fame, though earth betraythedust it clasped, 
Lies sepulchred in monumental thought ; — 
Progenitors of all that yet is great, 
Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept 
In your high ministrations, us, your sons — 
Us first, and the more glorious yet to come ! 
And ye, weak conquerors ! giants who look pale 
When the crushed worm rebels beneath your 
tread — 



The vultures, and the dogs, your pensioners tame, 
Are overgorged ; but, like oppressors, still 
They crave the relic of Destruction's feast. 
The exhalations and the thirsty winds 
Are sick with blood ; the dew is foul with death — 
Heaven's light is quenched in slaughter : Thus 

where'er 
Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets, 
The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast 
Of these dead limbs, upon your streams and moun- 
tains, 
Upon your fields, your gardens, and your house- 
tops, 
Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly, 
Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down 
With poisoned fight — Famine, and Pestilence, 
And Panic, shall wage war upon our side ! 
Nature from all her boundaries is moved 
Against ye : Time has found ye light as foam. 
The earth rebels ; and Good and Evil stake 
Their empire o'er the unborn world of men 
On this one cast — but ere the die be thrown, 
The renovated genius of our race, 
Proud umpire of the impious game, descends 
A seraph- winged Victory, bestriding 
The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, 
Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, 
And you to oblivion ! " — More he would have said, 
But— 

MAHMUD. 

Died — as thou shouldst ere thy lips had painted 
Their ruin in the hues of our success. 
A rebel's crime, gilt with a rebel's tongue ! 
Your heart is Greek, Hassan. 

HASSAN. 

It may be so : 
A spirit not my own wrenched me within, 
And I have spoken words I fear and hate ; 
Yet would I die for — 

MAHMUD. 

Live ! live ! outlive 
Me and this sinking empire : — but the fleet — 



HASSAN. 



Alas! 



MAHMUD. 

The fleet which, like a flock of clouds 
Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner. 
Our winged castles from their merchant ships ! 
Our myriads before their weak pirate bands ! 
Our arms before their chains ! Our years of empire 
Before their centuries of servile fear ! 
Death is awake ! Repulsed on the waters, 
They own no more the thunder-bearing banner 
Of Mahmud ; but like hounds of a base breed, 
Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their 
master. 

HASSAN. 

Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae, saw 
The wreck — 

MAHMUD. 

The caves of the Icarian isles 
Hold each to the other in loud mockery, 
And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes 
First of the sea-convulsing fight — and then — 
Thou darest to speak — senseless are the mountains, 
Interpret thou their voice ! 



172 



HELLAS. 



HASSAN. 

My presence bore 
A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet 
Bore down at day-break from the North, and hung 
As multitudinous on the ocean line 
As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. 
Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men, 
Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle 
Was kindled. — 

First through the hail of our artillery 
The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail 
Dashed : — ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man 
To man, were grappled in the embrace of war, 
Inextricable but by death or victory. 
The tempest of the raging fight convulsed 
To its crystalline depths that stainless sea, 
And shook heaven's roof of golden morning clouds 
Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles. 
In the brief trances of the artillery, 
One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer 
Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapt 
The unforeseen event, till the north wind 
Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil 
Of battle-smoke — then victory — victory ! 
For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers 
Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon 
The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before, 
Among, around us; and that fatal sign 
Dried with its beams the strength of Moslem hearts, 
As the sun drinks the dew. — What more? We fled! 
Our noonday path over the sanguine foam 
Was beaconed, and the glare struck the sun pale, 
By our consuming transports : the fierce light 
Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red, 
And every countenance blank. Some ships lay 

feeding 
The ravening fire even to the water's level : 
Some were blown up ; some, settling heavily, 
Sunk ; and the shrieks of our companions died 
Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far, 
Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished ! 
We met the vultures legioned in the air, 
Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind : 
They, screaming from their cloudy mountain peaks, 
Stooped through the sulphureous battle-smoke, 

and perched 
Each on the weltering carcase that we loved, 
Like its ill angel or its damned soul. 
Riding upon the bosom of the sea, 
We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast. 
Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea, 
And ravening famine left his ocean-cave 
To dwell with war, with us, and with despair. 
We met night three hours to the west of Patmos, 
As with night, tempest — 



Enter a Messenger. 
MESSENGER. 

Your Sublime Highness, 
That Christian hound, the Muscovite ambassador, 
Has left the city. If the rebel fleet 
Had anchored in the port, had victory 
Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome, 
Panic were tamer. — Obedience and Mutiny, 
Like giants in contention planet-struck, 
Stand gazing on each other. — There is peace 
In Stamboul. — 



MAHMUD. 

Is the grave not calmer still ? 
Its ruins shall be mine. 

HASSAN. 

Fear not the Russian ; 
The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay 
Against the hunter. — Cunning, base, and cruel, 
He crouches, watching till the spoil be won, 
And must be paid for his reserve in blood. 
After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian 
That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion 
Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and 

fields, 
Rivers and seas, like that which we may win, 
But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves ! 

Enter Second Messenger. 
SECOND MESSENGER. 

Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens, 

Navarin, Artas, Monembasia, 

Corinth and Thebes, are carried by assault ; 

And every Islamite who made his dogs 

Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves, 

Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood, 

Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in 

death ; 
But like a fiery plague breaks out anew 
In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale 
In its own light. The garrison of Patras 
Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope 
But from the Briton ; at once slave and tyrant, 
His wishes still are weaker than his fears ; 
Or he would sell what faith may yet remain 
From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway ;, 
And if you buy him not, your treasury 
Is empty even of promises — his own coin. 
The freeman of a western poet chief 
Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels, 
And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont ; 
The aged Ali sits in Yanina, 
A crownless metaphor of empire ; 
His name, that shadow of his withered might, 
Holds our besieging army like a spell 
In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny : 
He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth 
Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors 
The ruins of the city where he reigned 
Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped 
The costly harvest his own blood matured, 
Not the sower, Ali — who has bought a truce 
From Ypsilanti, with ten camel-loads 
Of Indian gold. 

Enter a Third Messenger. 

MAHMUD. 

What more ? 

THIRD MESSENGER. 

The Christian tribes 
Ox Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness 
Are in revolt ; — Damascus, Hems, Aleppo, 
Tremble ; — the Arab menaces Medina ; 
The Ethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar, 
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed, 
Who denies homage, claims investiture 
As price of tardy aid. Persia demands 
The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians 
Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus, 
Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins 



HELLAS. 



173 



Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake spasm, 

Shake in the general fever. Through the city, 

Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek, 

And prophesyings horrible and new 

Are heard among the crowd ; that sea of men 

Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still. 

A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches 

That it is written how the sins of Islam 

Must raise up a destroyer even now. 

The Greeks expect a Saviour from the west ; 

Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory, 

But in the omnipresence of that spirit 

In which all live and are. Ominous signs 

Are blazoned broadly on the noon-day sky ; 

One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun ; 

It has rained blood ; and monstrous births declare 

The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. 

The army encamped upon the Cydaris 

Was roused last night by the alarm of battle, 

And saw two hosts conflicting in the air, — 

The shadows doubtless of the unborn time, 

Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet 

The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm 

Which swept the phantoms from among the stars. 

At the third watch the spirit of the plague 

Was heard abroad flapping among the tents : 

Those who relieved watch found the sentinels 

dead. 
The last news from the camp is, that a thousand 
Have sickened, and — 

Enter a Fourth Messenger. 
MAHMUD 

And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow 
Of some untimely rumour, speak ! 

FOURTH MESSENGER. 

One comes 
Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood ; 
He stood, he says, upon Clelonit's 
Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan 
Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters 
Then trembling in the splendour of the moon ; 
When, as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid 
Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets 
Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer, 
Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams, 
And smoke which strangled every infant wind 
That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air. 
At length the battle slept, but the Scirocco 
Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds 
Over the sea-horizon, blotting out 
All objects — save that in the faint moon-glimpse 
He saw, or dreamed he saw the Turkish admiral 
And two, the loftiest, of our ships of war, 
With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven, 
Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed ; 
And the abhorred cross — 

Enter an Atte7idant. 

ATTENDANT. 

Your Sublime Highness, 
The Jew, who 

a ' MAHMUD. 

Could not come more seasonably : 
Lid him attend. I'll hear no more ! too long 
We gaze on danger through the mist of fear, 
And multiply upon our shattered hopes 
The images of ruin. Come what will ! 



To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps 

Set in our path to light us to the edge, 

Through rough and smooth: nor can we suffer 

aught 
Which he inflicts not in whose hand we are. 

[Exeunt 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Would I were the winged cloud 
Of a tempest swift and loud ! 

I would scorn 

The smile of morn, 
And the wave where the moon-rise is born ! 

I would leave 

The spirits of eve 
A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave 
From other threads than mine ! 
Bask in the blue noon divine 

Who would, not I. 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Whither to fly ? 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Where the rocks that gird th' vEgean 
Echo to the battle psean 
Of the free — 
I would flee 
A tempestuous herald of victory ! 
My golden rain 
For the Grecian slain 
Should mingle in tears with the bloody main ; 
And my solemn thunder-knell 
Should ring to the world the passing-bell 
Of tyranny ! 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Ah king ! wilt thou chain 
The rack and the rain ? 
Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane? 
The storms are free, 
But we 

CHORUS. 

Slavery ! thou frost of the world's prime, 

Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare ! 
Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime, 
These brows thy branding garland bear ; 
But the free heart, the impassive soul, 
Scorn thy control ! 

SEMICHORUS I. 

^et there be light ! said Liberty ; 
And like sunrise from the sea, 
Athens arose ! — Around her born, 
Shone like mountains in the morn, 
Glorious states ; — and are they now 
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion % 



SEMICHORUS II. 



Go 



Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed 
Persia, as the sand does foam. 

Deluge upon deluge followed, 
Discord, Macedon, and Rome : 

And, lastly, thou ! 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Temples and towers, 
Citadels and marts, and they 

Who live and die there, have been ours, 
And may be thme, and must decay ; 



174 



HELLAS. 



But Greece and her foundations are 

Built below the tide of war, 

Based on the crystalline sea 

Of thought and its eternity ; 
Her citizens, imperial spirits, 

Rule the present from the past, 
On all this world of men inherits 

Their seal is set. 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Hear ye the blast, 
Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls 
From ruin her Titanian walls ? 
Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones 

Of Slavery ? Argos, Corinth, Crete, 
Hear, and from their mountain thrones 

The daemons and the nymphs repeat 
The harmony. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

I hear ! I hear ! 

SEMICHORUS II. 

The world's eyeless charioteer, 

Destiny, is hurrying by ! 
What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds 
Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds \ 
What eagle-winged victory sits 
At her right hand ? what shadow flits 
Before \ what splendour rolls behind % 

Ruin and Renovation cry, 
Who but we ? 

SEMICHORUS I. 

I hear ! I hear ! 
The hiss as of a rushing wind, 
The roar as of an ocean foaming, 
The thunder as of earthquake coming, 

I hear ! I hear ! 
The crash as of an empire falling, 
The shrieks as of a people calling 
Mercy ! Mercy ! — How they thrill ! 
Then a shout of " Kill ! kill ! kill ! " 
And then a small still voice, thus — 



SEMICHORUS II. 



For 



Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, 
The foul cubs like their parents are, 

Their den is in their guilty mind, 

And Conscience feeds them with despair. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

In sacred Athens, near the fane 

Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood ; 
Serve not the unknown God in vain, 
But pay that broken shrine again 
Love for hate, and tears for blood. 

Enter Mahmud and Ahasuerus. 
MAHMUD. 

Thou art a man, thou say est, even as we — 



AHASUERUS. 



No more 



MAHMUD. 

But raised above thy fellow-men 
By thought, as I by power. 

AHASUERUS. 

Thou say est so. 



MAHMUD. 

Thou art an adept in the difficult lore 

Of Greek and Frank philosophy ; thou numberest 

The flowers, and thou measurest the stars ; 

Thou severest element from element ; 

Thy spirit is present in the past, and sees 

The birth of this old world through all its cycles 

Of desolation and of loveliness ; 

And when man was not, and how man became 

The monarch and the slave of this low sphere, 

And all its narrow circles — it is much. 

I honour thee, and would be what thou art 

Were I not what I am ; but the unborn hour, 

Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms, 

Who shall unveil ? Nor thou, nor I, nor any 

Mighty or wise. I apprehend not 

What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive 

That thou art no interpreter of dreams ; 

Thou dost not own that art, device, or God, 

Can make the future present — let it come ! 

Moreover thou disdainest us and ours ! 

Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest. 

AHASUERUS. 

Disdain thee ? — not the worm beneath my feet ! 
The Fathomless has care for meaner things 
Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for 

those 
Who would be what they may not, or would seem 
That which they are not. Sultan ! talk no more 
Of thee and me, the future and the past ; 
But look on that which cannot change — the One 
The unborn, and the undying. Earth and ocean, 
Space, and the isles of life or light that gem 
The sapphire floods of interstellar air, 
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, 
With all its cressets of immortal fire, 
Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably 
Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them 
As Calpe the Atlantic clouds — this whole 
Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and 

flowers, 
With all the silent or tempestuous workings 
By which they have been, are, or cease to be, 
Is but a vision ; — all that it inherits 
Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles, and dreams ; 
Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less 
The future and the past are idle shadows 
Of thought's eternal flight— they have no being ; 
Nought is but that it feels itself to be. 

MAHMUD. 

What meanest thou? thy words stream like a tempest 
Of dazzling mist within my brain — they shake 
The earth on which I stand, and hang like night 
On Heaven above me. What can they avail ? 
They cast on all things, surest, brightest, best, 
Doubt, insecurity, astonishment. 

AHASUERUS. 

Mistake me not ! All is contained in each. 

Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup 

Is that which has been or will be, to that 

Which is— the absent to the present. Thought 

Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion., s 

Reason, Imagination, cannot die ; 

They are what that which they regard appears, " 

The stuff whence mutability can weave 

All that it hath dominion o'er, — worlds, worms. 

Empires, and superstitions. What has thought 



HELLAS. 



175 



To do with time, or place, or circumstance ? 
Wouldst thou behold the future \ — ask and have ! 
Knock and it shall be opened — look, and lo I 
The coming age is shadowed on the past, 
As on a glass. 



MAHMUD. 



Wild, wilder thoughts convulse 
My spirit — Did not Mahomet the Second 
Win Stamboul ? 



AHASUERUS. 



Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit 
The written fortunes of thy house and faith. 
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell 
How what was born in blood must die. 



MAHMUD. 

Have power on me ! I see — 

AHASUERUS. 



Thy words 



What hearest thou ? 



A far whisper — 
Terrible silence. 



AHASUERUS. 

What succeeds ? 



MAHMUD. 

The sound 
As of the assault of an imperial city, 
The hiss of inextinguishable fire, 
The roar of giant cannon ; — the earthquaking 
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers, 
The shock of crags shot from strange engin'ry, 
The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs, 
And crash of brazen mail, as of the wreck 
Of adamantine mountains — the mad blast 
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds, 
And shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood, 
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, 
As of a joyous infant waked, and playing 
With its dead mother's breast ; and now more loud 
The mingled battle-cry — ha ! hear I not 
'Ei/ tovto) viK7). Allah-illah- Allah ! 

AHASUERUS. 

The sulphureous mist is raised — thou seest — 

MAHMUD. 

A chasm, 
As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamboul ; 
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites, 
Like giants on the ruins of a world, 
Stand in the light of sunrise In the dust 
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one 
Of regal port has cast himself beneath 
The stream of war. Another, proudly clad 
In golden arms, spurs a Tartarian barb 
Into the gap, and with his iron mace 
Directs the torrent of that tide of men, 
And seems — he is — Mahomet ! 

AHASUERUS. 

What thou see'st 
Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream ; 
A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that 
Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst behold 
How cities, on which empire sleeps enthroned, 
Bow their towered crests to mutability. 
Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest, 



Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power 

Ebbs to its depths Inheritor of glory, 

Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished 
With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes 
Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past 
Now stands before thee like an Incarnation 
Of the To -come ; yet wouldst thou commune with 
That portion of thyself which was ere thou 
Didst start for this brief race whose crown is 

death ; 
Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion 
Which called it from the uncreated deep, 
Yon cloud of war with its tempestuous phantoms 
Of raging death ; and draw with mighty will 
The imperial shade hither. 

{Exit AHASUERUS. 
MAHMUD. 

Approach ! 

PHANTOM. 

I come 

Thence whither thou must go ! The grave is fitter 
To take the living, than give up the dead ; 
Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here. 
The heavy fragments of the power which fell 
When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds, 
Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices 
Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose, 
Wailing for glory never to return. — 
A later Empire nods in its decay ; 
The autumn of a greener faith is come, 
And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip 
The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built 
Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below. 
The storm is in its branches, and the frost 
Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects 
Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil, 
Ruin on ruin : thou art slow, my son ; 
The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep 
A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies 
Boundless and mute ; and for thy subjects thou, 
Like us, shall rule the ghosts of murdered life, 
The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now — 
Mutinous passions and conflicting fears, 
And hopes that sate themselves on dust and die ! 
Stript of their mortal strength, as thou of thine. 
Islam must fall, but we will reign together 
Over its ruins in the world of death : — 
And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed 
Unfold itself even in the shape of that 
Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe ! woe 1 
To the weak people tangled in the grasp 
Of its last spasms. 

MAHMUD. 

Spirit, woe to all ! 
Woe to the wronged and the avenger ! Woe 
To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed ! 
Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver ! 
Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor ! 
Woe both to those that suffer and inflict ; 
Those who are born, and those who die ! But say, 
Imperial shadow of the thing I am, 
When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish 
Her consummation % 

PHANTOM. 

Ask the cold pale Hour, 
Rich in reversion of impending death, 
When he shall fall upon whose ripe grey hairs 
Sit care, and sorrow, and infirmity — 



176 



HELLAS. 



The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed 

with years, 
Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart 
Over the heads of men, under which burthen 
They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch! 
He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years 
To come, and how in hours of youth renewed 
He will renew lost joys, and 

VOICE WITHOUT. 

Victory ! victory ! 
[The Phantom vanishes. 

MAHMUD. 

What sound of the importunate earth has broken 
My mighty trance \ 

VOICE WITHOUT. 

Victory ! victory ! 

MAHMUD. 

Weak lightning before darkness ! poor faint smile 
Of dying Islam ! Voice which art the response 
Of hollow weakness ! Do I wake and live \ 
Were there such things ? or may the unquiet brain, 
Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew, 
Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear ? 
It matters not ! — for nought we see or dream, 
Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth 
More than it gives or teaches. Come what may, 
The future must become the past, and I 
As they were, to whom once this present hour, 
This gloomy crag of time to which I cling, 
Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy 
Never to be attained. — I must rebuke 
This drunkenness of triumph ere it die, 
And dying, bring despair. — Victory! — poor slaves! 

[Exit Mahmud. 
VOICE WITHOUT. 

Shout in the jubilee of death ! The Greeks 

Are as a brood of lions in the net, 

Round which the kingly hunters of the earth 

Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food 

Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, 

From Thule to the girdle of the world, 

Come, feast ! the board groans with the flesh of men — 

The cup is foaming with a nation's blood, 

Famine and Thirst await : eat, drink, and die ! 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, 
Salutes the risen sun, pursues the flying day ! 

I saw her ghastly as a tyrant's dream, 
Perch on the trembling pyramid of night, 
Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned 
In visions of the dawning undelight. [lay 

Who shall impede her flight I 
Who rob her of her prey ? 

VOICE WITHOUT. 

Victory ! victory ! Russia's famished eagles 
Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light. 
Impale the remnant of the Greeks ! despoil ! 
Violate ! make their flesh cheaper than dust ! 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Thou voice which art 
The herald of the ill in splendour hid ! 

Thou echo of the hollow heart 
Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode 



"When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed. 
Oh bear me to those isles of jagged cloud 

Which floatlike mountains on the earthquakes, 
'mid 
The momentary oceans of the lightning ; 

Or to some toppling promontory proud 

Of solid tempest, whose black pyramid, 
Riven, overhangs the founts intensely brightening 

Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire 

Before their waves expire, 
When heaven and earth are light, and only light 
In the thunder-night ! 

VOICE WITHOUT. 

Victory ! victory ! Austria, Russia, England, 
And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France, 
Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs 

speak. 
Ho, there ! bring torches, sharpen those rea 

stakes ! 
These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners 
Than Greeks. Kill ! plunder '• burn ! let none 

remain. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Alas for Liberty ! 
If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years, 
Or fate, can quell the free ; 
Alas for Virtue ! when 
Torments, or contumely, or the sneers 
Of erring judging men 
Can break the heart where it abides. 
Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure 
world splendid, 

Can change, with its false times and tides, 
Like hope and terror — 
Alas for Love ! 
And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended. 
If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror 
Before the dazzled eyes of Error. 
Alas for thee ! Image of the Above, 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn, 

Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn 

Through many an hostile Anarchy ! 
At length they wept aloud and cried, " The sea ! 
the sea ! " 
Through exile, persecution, and despair, 

Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become 
The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb 
Of all whose step wakes power lulled in her savage 
lair : 
But Greece was as a hermit child, 

Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built 
To woman's growth, by dreams so mild 
She knew not pain or guilt ; 
And now, Victory, blush ! and Empire, tremble, 
When ye desert the free ! 
If Greece must be 
A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble, 
And build themselves again impregnably 

In a diviner clime, 
To Amphionic music, on some Cape sublime, 
Which frowns above the idle foam of Time. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made ; 

Let the free possess the paradise they claim ; 
Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed 

With our ruin, our resistance, and our name ! 



HELLAS. 



SEMICHORUS II. 

Our dead shall be the seed of their decay, 
Our survivors be the shadows of their pride, 

Our adversity a dream to pass away — 
Their dishonour a remembrance to abide ! 

VOICE WITHOUT. 

Victory ! Victory ! The bought Briton sends 

The keys of ocean to the Islamite. 

Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled, 

And British skill directing Othman might, 

Thunder-strike rebel victory. O keep holy 

This jubilee of unrevenged blood ! 

Kill ! crush ! despoil ! Let not a Greek escape ! 

SEMICHORUS I. 

Darkness has dawned in the East 

On the noon of time : 
The death-birds descend to their feast, 

From the hungry clime. 
Let Freedom and Peace flee far 

To a sunnier strand, 
And follow Love's folding star ! 

To the Evening land ! 

SEMICHORUS II. 

The young moon has fed 
Her exhausted horn 
With the sunset's fire : 
The weak day is dead, 

But the night is not born ; 
And, like loveliness panting with wild desire, 
While it trembles with fear and delight, 
Hesperus flies from awakening night, 
And pants in its beauty and speed with light 
Fast-flashing, soft, and bright. 
Thou beacon of love ! thou lamp of the free ! 

Guide us far, far away, 
To climes where now, veiled by the ardour of day, 
Thou art hidden 
From waves on which weary noon 
Faints in her summer swoon, 
Between kingless continents, sinless as Eden, 
Around mountains and islands inviolably 
Prankt on the sapphire sea. 



SEMICHORUS I. 

Through the sunset of hope, 
Like the shapes of a dream, 
What Paradise islands of glory gleam 

Beneath Heaven's cope. 
Their shadows more clear float by — ■ 
The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky, 



The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe, 
Burst like morning on dreams, or like Heaven on 
death, 

Through the walls of our prison ; 

And Greece, which was dead, is arisen ! 

CHORUS. 

The world's great age begins anew, 

The golden years return, 
The earth doth like a snake renew 
Her winter weeds outworn : 
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam 
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains 

From waves serener far ; 
A new Peneus rolls its fountains 

Against the morning-star. 
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep 
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. 

A loftier Argo cleaves the main, 

Fraught with a later prize ; 
Another Orpheus sings again, 

And loves, and weeps, and dies. 
A new Ulysses leaves once more 
Calypso for his native shore. 

O write no more the tale of Troy, 
If earth Death's scroll must be ! 

Nor mix with Laian rage the joy 
Which dawns upon the free : 

Although a subtler sphinx renew 

Riddles of death Thebes never knew. 

Another Athens shall arise, 

And to remoter time 
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, 

The splendour of its prime ; 
And leave, if nought so bright may live, 



All earth can take or heaven can 



give. 



Saturn and Love their long repose 
Shall burst, more bright and good 

Than all who fell, than One who rose., 
Than many unsubdued : 

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, 

But votive tears, and symbol flowers. 

O cease ! must hate and death return % 
Cease ! must men kill and die ? 
Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn 

Of bitter prophecy. 
The world is weary of the past, 
might it die or rest at last ! 



178 



NOTES ON HELLAS. 



NOTES. 



P. 168, col. 1, 1. 20. 
The quenchless ashes of Milan. 

Milan was the centre of the resistance of the Lom- 
bard league against the Austrian tyrant. Frederick 
Barbarossa burnt the city to the ground, but liberty 
lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from 
its ruin. — See Sismondi's " Histoires des Repub- 
liques Italiennes," a book which has done much 
towards awakening the Italians to an imitation of their 
great ancestors. 

P. 169, col. 2, 1.1. 

CHORDS. 

The popular notions of Christianity are represented 
in this chorus as true in their relation to the worship 
they superseded, and that which in all probability they 
will supersede, without considering their merits in a rela- 
tion more universal. The first stanza contrasts the 
immortality of the living and thinking beings which 
inhabit the planets, and, to use a common and inade- 
quate phrase, clothe themselves in matter, with the 
transience of the noblest manifestations of the external 
world. 

The concluding verses indicate a progressive state of 
more or less exalted existence, according to the degree 
of perfection which every distinct intelligence may 
have attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to 
dogmatize upon a subject concerning which all men 
are equally ignorant, or that I think the Gordian knot 
of the origin of evil can be disentangled by that or 
any similar assertions. The received hypothesis of a 
Being resembling men in the moral attributes of his 
nature, having called us out of non-existence, and 
after inflicting on us the misery of the commission of 
error, should superadd that of the punishment and 
the privations consequent upon it, still would remain 
inexplicable and incredible. That there is a true 
solution of the riddle, and that in our present state 
the solution is unattainable by us, are propositions 
which may be regarded as equally certain ; meanwhile, 
as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to 
those ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him 
be permitted to have conjectured the condition of that 
futurity towards which we are all impelled by an in- 
extinguishable thirst for immortality. Until better 
arguments can be produced than sophisms which dis- 
grace the cause, this desire itself must remain the 
strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the 
inheritance of every thinking being. 

P. 169, col. 2, 1. 51. 
No hoary priests after that Patriarch. 
The Greek Patriarch, after having been compelled to 
fulminate an anathema against the insurgents, was put 
to death by the Turks. 



Fortunately the Greeks have been taught that they 
cannot buy security by degradation, and the Turks, 
though equally cruel, are less cunning than the smooth- 
faced tyrants of Europe. 

As to the anathema, his Holiness might as well have 
thrown his mitre at Mount Athos for any effect that it 
produced. The chiefs of the Greeks are almost all 
men of comprehension and enlightened views on re- 
ligion and politics. 

P. 172, col. 2, 1. 30. 

The freeman of a western poet chief. 

A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant com- 
mands the insurgents in Attica. This Greek, Lord 
Byron informs me, though a poet and an enthusiastic 
patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and unen- 
terprising person. It appears that circumstances make 
men w T hat they are, and that we all contain the germ 
of a degree of degradation or greatness, whose con- 
nexion with our character is determined by events. 



P. 173, col. 1, 1. 10. 

The Greeks expect a Saviour from the west. 

It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a sea- 
port near Lacedemon in an American brig. The asso- 
ciation of names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but 
the prevalence of such a rumour strongly marks the 
state of popular enthusiasm in Greece. 



P. 175, coll, 1.19. 

TJic sound 
As of the assault of an imperial city. 

For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Con- 
stantinople in 1445, see Gibbon's Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Empire, vol. xii. p. 223. 

The manner of the invocation of the spirit of 
Mahomet the Second will be censured as overdrawn. 
I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, 
and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred 
to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, 
or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting 
Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be 
supposed to assume the force of sensation, through the 
confusion of thought, with the objects of thought, 
and excess of passion animating the creations of the 
imagination. 

It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being 
exercised in a degree by any one who should have 
made himself master of the secret associations of 
another's thoughts. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON HELLAS. 



179 



P. 177, col. 2, 1. .->. 

CHORUS. 

The final chorus is indistinct and obscure as the 
event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. 

Prophecies of wars, and rumours of wars, &c. may 
safely be made by poet or prophet in any age ; but to 
anticipate, however darkly, a period of regeneration 
and happiness, is a more hazardous exercise of the 
faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind 
the reader, " magno nee proximus intervallo " of Isaiah 
and Virgil, whose ardent spirits, overleaping the actual 
reign of evil which we endure and bewail, already saw 
the possible and perhaps approaching state of society 
in which the " lion shall lie down with the lamb," and 
"omnis feret omnia tellus." Let these great names be 
my authority and excuse. 

P. 177, col. 2, 1.35. 

Saturn and Love their long repose. 

Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real 

or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All 

those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; 



the One, who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appear- 
ance the idols of the Pagan world were amerced of 
their worship ; and the many unsubdued, or the mon- 
strous objects of the idolatry of China, India, and the 
Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America, 
certainly have reigned over the understandings of men 
in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which 
all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, 
and, until the revival of learning and the arts, per- 
petually increasing activity. The Grecian Gods seem 
indeed to have been personally more innocent, although 
it cannot be said that, as far as temperance and chastity 
are concerned, they gave so edifying an example as their 
successor. The sublime human character of Jesus 
Christ was deformed by an imputed identification 
with a power, who tempted, betrayed, and punished 
the innocent beings who were called into existence oy 
his sole will ; and for the period of a thousand years, 
the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of 
men, has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs 
of those who approached the nearest to his inno- 
cence and wisdom, sacrificed under every aggravation 
of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of 
the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitione 
are well known. 



NOTE ON HELLAS BY THE EDITOR. 



The south of Europe was in a state of great 
political excitement at the beginning of the year 
1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a signal 
to Italy — secret societies were formed — and when 
Naples rose to declare the Constitution, the call 
was responded to from Brundusium to the foot of 
the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty, 
early in 1821, the Austrians poured their armies 
into the Peninsula : at first their coming rather 
seemed to add energy and resolution to a people 
long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their 
freedom ; Genoa threw oft the yoke of the King 
of Sardinia ; and, as if in playful imitation, the 
people of the little state of Massa and Carrara 
gave the conge to their sovereign and set up a 
republic. 

Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was 
said, that the Austrian minister presented a list 
of sixty Carbonari to the grand-duke, urging their 
imprisonment ; and the grand-duke replied, " I 
do not know whether these sixty men are Car- 
bonari, but I know if I imprison them, I shall 
directly have sixty thousand start up." But 
though the Tuscans had no desire to disturb the 
paternal government, beneath whose shelter they 
slumbered, they regarded the progress of the 
various Italian revolutions with intense interest, 
and hatred for the Austrian was warm in every 



bosom. But they had slender hopes ; they knew 
that the Neapolitans would offer no fit resistance 
to the regular German troops, and that the over- 
throw of the Constitution in Naples would act as 
a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in 
Italy. 

We have seen the rise and progress of reform. 
But the Holy Alliance was alive and active 
in those days, and few could dream of the 
peaceful triumph of liberty. It seemed then that 
the armed assertion of freedom in the south of 
Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it 
prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate 
the example. Happily the reverse has proved 
the fact. The countries accustomed to the exer- 
cise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited 
extent, have extended, and are extending these 
hmits. Freedom and knowledge have now a 
chance of proceeding hand in hand ; and if it 
continue thus, we may hope for the durability of 
both. Then, as I have said, in 1821, Shelley, as 
well as every other lover of liberty, looked upon 
the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of 
the destinies of the world, probably for centuries 
to come. The interest he took in the progress 
of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared 
itself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day 
after day, he read the bulletins of the Austrian 

N 2 



180 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON HELLAS. 



army, and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its 
defeat, lie heard of the revolt of Genoa with 
emotions of transport. His whole heart and soul 
were hi the triumph of their cause. We were living 
at Pisa at that time ; and several well-informed 
Italians, at the head of whom we may place the 
celebrated Vacea, were accustomed to seek for 
sympathy in their hopes from Shelley : they did not 
find such for the despair they too generally ex- 
perienced, founded on contempt for their southern 
countrymen. 

While the fate of the progress of the Austrian 
armies then invading Naples was yet in suspense, 
the news of another revolution filled him with 
exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at 
Pisa of several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the 
family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of 
Wallachia, who, hearing that the bowstring, the 
accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the 
road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took 
up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the 
gentleman to whom the drama of Hellas is dedi- 
cated. Prince Mavrocordato was warmed by 
those aspirations for the independence of his 
country, which filled the hearts of many of his 
countrymen. He often intimated the possibility 
of an insurrection in Greece ; but we had no idea 
of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of 
April, 1821, he called on Shelley ; bringing the 
proclamation of his cousin Prince Ipsilanti, and, 
radiant with exultation and delight, declared that 
henceforth Greece would be free. 

Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain 
and Naples, in two odes, dictated by the warmest 
enthusiasm ; — he felt himself naturally impelled 
to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descend- 
ants of that people, whose works he regarded with 
deep admiration ; and to adopt the vaticinatory 
character in prophesying their success. " Hellas " 
was written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is 
curious to remark how well he overcomes the 
difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant 
materials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in 



their general, not their particular purport. He 
did not foresee the death of Lord Londonderry, 
which was to be the epoch of a change in English 
politics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs ; 
nor that the navy of his country would fight for 
instead of against the Greeks ; and by the battle 
of Navarino secure their enfranchisement from 
the Turks. Almost against reason, as it appeared 
to him, he resolved to believe that Greece would 
prove triumphant ; and in this spirit, auguring 
I ultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to 
be endured in the interval, he composed his drama. 

The chronological order to be observed in the 
arrangement of the remaining poems, is inter- 
rupted here, that his dramas may follow each 
other consecutively. u Hellas " was among the 
last of his compositions, and is among the most 
beautiful. The choruses are singularly ima- 
ginative, and melodious in their versification. 
There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify 
Shelley's peculiar style ; as, for instance, the 
assertion of the intellectual empire which must be 
for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, 
Sophocles, and Plato : 

But Greece and her foundations are 
Built below the tide of war ; 
Based on the crystalline sea 
Of thought and its eternity. 

And again, that philosophical truth, felicitously 
imaged forth — 

Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, 
The foul cubs like their parents are ; 
Their den is in the guilty mind, 
And conscience feeds them with despair. 

The conclusion of the last chorus is among the 
most beautiful of his lyrics ; the imagery is dis- 
tinct and majestic ; the prophecy, such as poets 
love to dwell upon, the regeneration of mankind — 
and that regeneration reflecting back splendour 
on the foregone time, from which it inherits so 
much of intellectual wealth, and memory of past 
virtuous deeds, as must render the possession of 
happiness and peace of tenfold value. 



END OF HELLAS. 



(EDIPUS TYRANNUS; 

OR, 

SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 
& CragetJi), in Cfoo 8ctsi. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC. 



Choose Reform or Civil War, 



When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, 
A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, 
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

This Tragedy is one of a triad, or system of three 
Plays, (an arrangement according to which the Greeks 
were accustomed to connect their Dramatic representa- 
tions,) elucidating the wonderful and appalling fortunes 
of the Swellfoot dynasty. It was evidently written 
by some learned Theban, and from its characteristic 
dulness, apparently before the duties on the importa- 
tion of Attic salt had been repealed by the Bceotarchs. 
The tenderness with which he beats the Pigs proves 
him to have been a sus B&oticB ; possibly Epicuri 
de grege porcus ; for, as the poet observes, 

** A fellow feeling makes us wond'rous kind." 



No liberty has been taken with the translation of 
this remarkable piece of antiquity, except the sup- 
pressing a seditious and blasphemous chorus of the Pigs 
and Bulls at the last act. The word Hoydipouse, (or 
more properly GCdipus,) has been rendered literally 
Swellfoot, without its having been conceived neces- 
sary to determine whether a swelling of the hind or 
the fore feet of the Swinish Monarch is particularly 
indicated. 

Should the remaining portions of this Tragedy be 
found, entitled, " Swellfoot in Angaria" and 
" Charite," the Translator might be tempted to give 
them to the reading Public. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 



Tyrant Swellfoot, Ring of Thebes. 
Iona Taurina, his Queen. 
Mammon, Arch-Priest of Famine. 

PURGANAX, \ 

Dakry V Wizards, Ministers of 

J Swellfoot. 

Laoctonos, / 



The Gadfly. 
The Leech. 
The Rat. 
The Minotaur. 
Moses, the Sow-geider. 
Solomon, the Porkman. 
Zephanlih, Pig-Butcher. 
Chorus of the Swinish Multitude. 
Guards, Attendants, Priests, S;c. Sfc. 



Scene,— Thebes. 



iaa 



CEDIPUS TYUANNUS; 



ACT I. 



SCENE I. 

A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death's- 
heads , and tiled with scalps. Over the Altar the statue 
of Famine, veiled; a ?i umber of boars, sotvs, and sucking- 
pigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on 
the steps, and clinging round the Altar of the Temple. 

Enter Swellfoot, in his royal rubes, without perceiving 
the Pigs. 

SWELLFOOT. 

Thoo supreme Goddess ! by whose power divine 
These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array 

[He contemplates himself with satisfaction. 
Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch 
Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze, 
And these most sacred nether promontories 
Lie satisfied with layers of fat ; and these 
Bceotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid, 
(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid,*) 
Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain, 
That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing ! 
Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors, 
Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers, 
Bishops and deacons, and the entire army 
Of those fat martyrs to the persecution 
Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils, 
Offer their secret vows ! Thou plenteous Ceres 
Of their Eleusis, hail ! 



Eigh! eigh 



THE SWINE. 

eigh ! eigh ! 



SWELLFOOT. 

Ha ! what are ye, 
Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies, 
Cling round this sacred shrine ? 



Aigh ! aigh ! aigh ! 

SWELLFOOT. 

What ! ye that are 
The very beasts that offered at her altar 
With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and 

inwards, 
Ever propitiate her reluctant will 
When taxes are withheld ? 



Ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! 

SWELLFOOT. 

What ! ye who grub 
With filthy snouts my red potatoes up 
In Allan's rushy bog 1 Who eat the oats 
Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides ? 
Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest 
From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather, 
Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you ? 

* See Universal History for an account of the number 
of people who died, and the immense consumption of 
garlic by the wretched Egyptians, who made a sepulchre 
for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants. 



THE SWINE. 

SEMICHORUS 1. 

The same, alas ! the same ; 

Though only now the name 

Of pig remains to me. 

SEMICHORUS II. 

If 'twere your kingly will 
Us wretched swine to kill, 

What should we yield to thee ? 

SWELLFOOT. 

Why skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar. 

CHORUS OF SWINE. 

I have heard your Laureate sing, 

That pity was a royal thing ; 

Under your mighty ancestors, we pigs 

Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, 

Or grasshoppers that live on noon-day dew, 

And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too : 

But now our sties are fallen in, we catch 

The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch ; 
Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch, 

And then we seek the shelter of a ditch ; 
Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none 
Has yet been ours since your reign begun. 

first sow. 
My pigs, 'tis in vain to tug ! 

second sow. 
I could almost eat my litter I 

FIRST PIG. 

I suck, but no milk will come from the dng. 

SECOND PIG. 

Our skin and our bones would be bitter. 

THE BOARS. 

We fight for this rag of greasy rug, 
Though a trough of wash would be fitter. 

SEMICHORUS. 

Happier swine were they than we, 
Drowned in the Gadarean sea — 
I wish that pity would drive out the devils 
Which in your royal bosom hold their revels, 
And sink us in the waves of your compassion ! 
Alas ! the Pigs are an unhappy nation ! 
Now if your Majesty would have our bristles 

To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons 
With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles, 

In policy — ask else your royal Solons — 
You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw, 
And sties well thatched ; besides, it is the law ! 

SWELLFOOT. 

This is sedition, and rank blasphemy ! 
Ho ! there, my guards I 

Enter a Guard. 
GUARD. 

Your sacred Majesty ? 



OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



183 



SWELLFOOT. 

Call in the Jews, Solomon the court porkman, 
Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah the hog- 
butcher. 

GUARD. 

They are in waiting, sire. 

Enter Solomon, Moses, and Zephaniah. 
SWELLFOOT. 

Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those sows, 
{The Pigs run about in consternation- 
That load the earth with pigs ; cut close and deep. 
Moral restraint I see has no effect, 
Nor prostitution, nor our own example, 
Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison — 
This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine 
Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy — 
Cut close and deep, good Moses. , 



Let your Majesty 
Keep the boars quiet, else — 

SWELLFOOT. 

Zephaniah, cut 
That fat hog's throat, the brute seems overfed ; 
Seditious hunks ! to whine for want of grains. 

ZEPHANIAH. 

Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy ; — 
We shall find pints of hydatids in's liver, 
He has not half an inch of wholesome fat 
Upon his carious ribs — 

SWELLFOOT. 

'Tis all the same, 
He'll serve instead of riot-money, when 
Our murmuring troops bivouaque in Thebes' 

streets ; 
Ani January winds, after a day 
Of butchering, will make them relish carrion. 
Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump 
The whole kit of them. 



I could not give- 



SOLOMON. 

Why, your Majesty, 



SWELLFOOT. 

Kill them out of the way, 
That shall be price enough, and let me hear 
Their everlasting grunts and whines no more ! 

{Exeunt, driving in the Swine. 

Enter Mammon, the Arch Priest; and Pcjrganax, Chief of 

the Council of Wizards. 

PURGANAX. 

The future looks as black as death, a cloud, 
Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it — 
The troops grow mutinous — the revenue fails — 
There's something rotten in us — for the level 
Of the State slopes, its very bases topple ; 
The boldest turn their backs upon themselves ! 

MAMMON. 

Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now ? 
Do the troops mutiny % — decimate some regiments ; 
Does money fail ? — come to my mint — coin paper, 
Till gold be at a discount, and, ashamed 
To show his bilious face, go purge himself, 
In emulation of her vestal whiteness. 



PURGANAX. 

Oh, would that this were all ! The oracle ! 

MAMMON. 

Why it was I who spoke that oracle, 
And whether I was dead drunk or inspired, 
I cannot well remember ; nor, in truth, 
The oracle itself ! 

PURGANAX. 

The words went thus : — 
" Boeotia, choose reform or civil war ! 
When through the streets, instead of hare witli 



A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, 
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur." 

MAMMON. 

Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold 
This sad alternative, it must arrive, 
Or not, and so it must now that it has ; 
And whether I was urged by grace divine, 
Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words, 
Which must, as all words must, be false or true ; 
It matters not : for the same power made all, 
Oracle, wine, and me and you — or none — 
'Tis the same thing. If you knew as much 
Of oracles as I do 

PURGANAX. 

You arch-priests 
Believe in nothing ; if you were to dream 
Of a particular number in the lottery, 
You would not buy the ticket ! 

MAMMON. 

Yet our tickets 
Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken ? 
For prophecies, when once they get abroad, 
Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends, 
Or hypocrites, who, from assuming virtue, 
Do the same actions that the virtuous do, 
Contrive their own fulfilment. This Iona — 
Well — you know what the chaste Pasiphae did, 
Wife to that most religious King of Crete, 
And still how popular the tale is here ; 
And these dull swine of Thebes boast their descent 
From the free Minotaur. You know they still 
Call themselves bulls, though thus degenerate ; 
And everything relating to a bull 
Is popular and respectable in Thebes : 
Their arms are seven bulls in a field gules. 
They think their strength consists in eating beef, — 
Now there were danger in the precedent 
If Queen Iona 

PURGANAX. 

I have taken good care 
That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth 
With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare ! 
And from a cavern full of ugly shapes, 
I chose a Leech, a Gadfly, and a Rat. 
The gadfly was the same which Juno sent 
To agitate Io,* and which Ezechielf mentions 
That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains 
Of utmost Ethiopia, to torment 
Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast 

* The Prometheus Bound of iEschylus. 
t And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of ./Ethiopia, 
and for the bee out of Egypt, &c — Ezkchikl. 



(EDIPUS TYRANNUS; 



Has a loud trumpet like the Scarabee ; 

His crooked tail is barbed with many stings, 

Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each 

Immedicable ; from his convex eyes 

He sees fair things in many hideous shapes, 

And trumpets all his falsehood to the world. 

Like other beetles he is fed on dung — 

He has eleven feet with which he crawls, 

Trailing a blistering slime ; and this foul beast 

Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits, 

From isle to isle, from city unto city, 

Urging her flight from the far Chersonese 

To fabulous Solyma, and the iEtnean Isle, 

Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock, 

And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez, 

JEoha and Elysium, and thy shores, 

Parthenope, which uow, alas ! are free ! 

And through the fortunate Saturnian land, 

Into the darkness of the West. 

MAMMON. 

But if 
This Gadfly should drive Iona hither ? 

PURGANAX. 

Gods ! what an if! but there is my grey Rat ; 
So thin with want, he can crawl in and out 
Of any narrow chink and filthy hole, 
And he shall creep into her dressing-room, 
And— 



My dear friend, where are your wits ? as if 
She does not always toast a piece of cheese, 
And bait the trap ? and rats, when lean enough 
To crawl through such chinks 

PURGANAX. 

But my Leech — a leech 
Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings, 
Capaciously expatiative, which make 
His little body like a red balloon, 
As full of blood as that of hydrogen, 
Sucked from men's hearts ; insatiably he sucks 
And clings an d pulls— a horse-leech, whose deep maw 
The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill, 
And who, till full, will elms: for ever. 



MAMMON. 



This 



For Queen Iona might suffice, and less ; 
But 'tis the swinish multitude I fear, 
And in that fear I have 



PURGANAX. 



Done what ? 



MAMMON. 

Disinherited 
My eldest son Chrysaor, because he 
Attended public meetings, and would always 
Stand prating there of commerce, public faith, 
Economy, and unadulterate coin, 
And other topics, ultra-radical ; 
And have entailed my estate, called the Fool's 

Paradise, 
And funds, in fairy-money, bonds, and bills, 
Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina, 
And married her to the Gallows.* 

* "If one should rnarry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, 
I never saw one so prone." — Cymbelinb. 



PURGANAX. 

A good match ! 

MAMMON. 

A high connexion, Purganax. The bridegroom 

Is of a very ancient family 

Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop, 

And has great influence in both Houses ; — Oh ! 

He makes the fondest husband ; nay too fond : — 

New-married people should not kiss in public ; — 

But the poor souls love one another so ! 

And then my little grandchildren, the Gibbets, 

Promising children as you ever saw, — 

The young playing at hanging, the elder learning 

How to hold radicals. They are well taught too, 

For every Gibbet says its catechism, 

And reads a select chapter in the Bible 

Before it goes to play. 

[A most tremendous humming is heard. 

PURGANAX. 

Ha ! what do I hear ! 
Enter Gadfly. 
MAMMON. 

Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding. 

GADFLY. 

Hum ! hum ! hum ! 
From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold grey scalps 

Of the mountains, I come ! 

Hum ! hum ! hum ! 
From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces 

Of golden Byzantium ; 
From the temples divine of old Palestine, 

From Athens and Rome, 

With a ha ! and a hum ! 

I come ! I come ! 

All inn-doors and windows 

Were open to me ! 
I saw all that sin does, 
Which lamps hardly see 
That burn in the night by the curtained bed, — 
The impudent lamps ! for they blushed not red. 
Dinging and singing, 
From slumber I rung her, 
Loud as the clank of an ironmonger ! 
Hum ! hum ! hum ! 

Far, far, far, 
With the trump of my lips, and the sting at my hips, 
I drove her— afar! 
Far, far, far, 
From city to city, abandoned of pity, 
A ship without needle or star ; — 
Homeless she past, like a cloud on the blast, 
Seeking peace, finding war ; — 
She is here in her car, 
From afar, and afar ; — 
Hum ! hum ! 

I have stung her and wrung her ! 

The venom is working ; — 
And if you had hung her 
With canting and quirking, 
She could not be deader than she will be soon ; — 
I have driven her close to you, under the moon. 

Night and day, hum ! hum ! ha ! 
I have hummed her and drummed her 
From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her 
Hum ! hum ! hum ! 



OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



185 



LEECH. 

I will suck 

Blood or muck ! 
The disease of the state is a plethory. 
Who so fit to reduce it as I ? 

RAT. 

I'll slily seize and 
Let blood from her weasand, — 
Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny, 
With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny. 

PURGANAX. 

Aroint ye ! thou unprofitable worm ! 

[To the Lkech. 
And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell ! 

[To the Gadfly. 
To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings, 
And the ox-headed Io. 

swine {within). 
Ugh, ugh, ugh ! 
Hail ! Iona the divine, 
We will be no longer swine, 
But bulls with horns and dewlaps. 

RAT. 

For, 
You know, my lord, the Minotaur 

purganax {fiercely). 
Be silent ! get to hell ! or I will call 
The cat out of the kitchen. Well, Lord Mammon, 
This is a pretty business ! 

[Exit the Rat. 

mammon. 

I will go 
And spell some scheme to make it ugly then. 



[Exit. 



Enter Swellfoot. 



SWELLFOOT. 

She is returned ! Taurina is in Thebes 
When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell ! 
Oh, Hymen ! clothed in yellow jealousy, 
And waving o'er the couch of wedded kings 
The torch of Discord with its fiery hair ; 
This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens ! 
Swellfoot is wived ! though parted by the sea, 
The very name of wife had conjugal rights ; 
Her cursed image ate, drank, slept with me, 
And in the arms of Adiposa oft 

Her memory has received a husband's 

[A loud tumult, mid cries of " Iona for ever !— No 
Swellfoot ! " 



SWELLFOOT. 



How the swine cry Iona Taurina ! 

I suffer the real presence : Purganax, 

Off with her head ! 



Hark 



A jury of the pigs. 



PURGANAX. 

But I must first impannel 



SWELLFOOT. 

Pack them then. 



PURGANAX. 

Or fattening some few in two separate sties, 
And giving them clean straw, tying some bits 
Of ribbon round their legs — giving their sows 



Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass, 
And their young boars white and red rags, and tails 
Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers 
Betwe&u the ears of the old ones ; and when 
They are persuaded, that by the inherent virtue 
Of these things, they are all imperial pigs, 
Good Lord ! they'd rip each other's bellies up, 
Not to say help us in destroying her. 

SWELLFOOT. 

This plan might be tried too ; — where's General 
Laoctonos ? 

Enter Laoctonos and Dakry. 
It is my royal pleasure 

That you, Lord General, bring the head and body, 
If separate it would please me better, hither 
Of Queen Iona. 

LAOCTONOS. 

That pleasure I well knew, 
And made a charge with those battalions bold, 
Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes, 
Upon the swine, who in a hollow square 
Enclosed her, and received the first attack 
Like so many rhinoceroses, and then 
Retreating in good order, with bare tusks 
And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe, 
Bore her in triumph to the public sty. 
What is still worse, some sows upon the ground 
Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin, 
And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry, 
"Long live Iona ! down with Swellfoot !" 



PURGANAX. 



Hark! 



THE SWINE, {without). 

Long live Iona ! down with Swellfoot ! 



Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower, 

Which overlooks the sty, and made a long 

Harangue (all words) to the assembled swine, 

Of delicacy, mercy, judgment, law, 

Morals, and precedents, and purity, 

Adultery, destitution, and divorce, 

Piety, faith, and state necessity, 

And how I loved the queen ! — and then I wept, 

With the pathos of my own eloquence, 

And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which 

Brained many a gaping pig, and there was made 

A slough of blood and brains upon the place, 

Greased with the pounded bacon ; round and round 

The millstones rolled, ploughing the pavement up, 

And hurling sucking pigs into the air, 

With dust and stones. 

Enter Mammon. 
MAMMON. 

I wonder that grey wizards 
Like you should be so beardless in their schemes ; 
It had been but a point of policy 
To keep Iona and the swine apart. 
Divide and rule ! but ye have made a junction 
Between two parties who will govern you, 
But for my art. — Behold this bag ! it is 
The poison bag of that Green Spider huge, 
On which our spies skulked in ovation through 
The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with 
dead : 



186 



(EDIPUS TYRANNUS; 



A bane so much the deadlier fills it now, 

As calumny is worse than death, — for here 

The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled, 

Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech, 

In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which 

That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, 

Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch ; — 

All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud, 

Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor, 

And over it the primate of all Hell 

Murmured this pious baptism : — " Be thou called 

The green bag ; and this power and grace be thine : 

That thy contents, on whomsoever poured, 

Turn innocence to guilt, and gontlest looks 

To savage, foul, and fierce deformity. 

Let all, baptised by thy infernal dew, 

Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch ! 

No name left out which orthodoxy loves, 

Court Journal or legitimate Review ! — 

Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover 

Of other wives and husbands than their own — 

The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps ! 

Wither they to a ghastly caricature 

Of what was human ! — let not man nor beast 

Behold their face with unaverted eyes ! 

Or hear their names with ears that tingle not 

With blood of indignation, rage, and shame !" 

This is a perilous liquor ; — good my Lords. 

[Swellfoot approaches to touch the green bag. 

Beware ! for God's sake, beware ! — if you should 
The seal, and touch the fatal liquor [break 

FURGANAX. 

There! 
Give it to me. I have been use to handle 
All sorts of poisons. His dread majesty 
Only desires to see the colour of it. 



MAMMON. 

Now, with a little common sense, my Lords, 

Only undoing all that has been done, 

(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it,) 

Our victory is assured. We must entice 

Her Majesty from the sty, and make the pigs 

Believe that the contents of the green bag 

Are the true test of guilt or innocence. 

And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her 

To manifest deformity like guilt. 

If innocent, she will become transfigured 

Into an angel, such as they say she is ; 

And they will see her flying through the air, 

So bright that she will dim the noon-day sun ; 

Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits. 

This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing 

Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them 

Climbing upon the thatch of then,' low sties ; 

With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail 

Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps 

Of one another's ears between their teeth, 

To catch the coming hail of comfits in. 

You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab, 

Make them a solemn speech to this effect : 

I go to put in readiness the feast 

Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine, 

Where, for more glory, let the ceremony 

Take place of the ugliflcation of the Queen. 

DAKRT (to SwELLFOOt). 

I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, 
Humbly remind your Majesty that the care 
Of your high office, as man-milliner 
To red Bellona, should not be deferred. 

PURGANAX. 

All part, in happier plight to meet again. 

^Exeunt. 



ACT II. 



SCENE I. 

The Public Sty. 

The Boars in full Assembly. 

Enter Purganax. 

PURGANAX. 
Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars, 
Ye, by whose patience under public burthens 
The glorious constitution of these sties 
Subsists, and shall subsist. The lean pig-rates 
Grow with the growing populace of swine, 
The taxes, that true source of piggishness, 
(How can I find a more appropriate term 
To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty, 
And all that fit Boeotia as a nation 
To teach the other nations how to live ?) 
Increase with piggishness itself ; and still 
Does the revenue, that great spring of all 
The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments, 
Which free-born pigs regard with jealous eyes, 
Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps, 
All the land's produce will be merged in taxes, 

And the revenue will amount to nothing ! 

T he failure of a foreign market for 
Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings, 



And such home manufactures, is but partial ; 
And, that the population of the pigs, 
Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw 
And water, is a fact which is — you know — 
That is — it is a state necessity — 
Temporary, of course. Those impious pigs, 
Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn 
The settled Swellfoot system, or to make 
Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions 
Inculcated by the arch -priest, have been whip: 
Into a loyal and an orthodox whine. 
Things being in this happy state, the Queen 

Iona 

A loud cryffom the Pigs. 

She is innocent ! most innocent ! 

PURGANAX. 

That is the very thing that I was saying, 
Gentlemen Swine ; the Queen Iona being 
Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes, 
And the lean sows and boars collect about her, 
Wishing to make her think that we believe 
( I mean those more substantial pigs, who swill 
Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp 
straw,) 



OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



187 



That she is guilty ; thus, the lean-pig faction 
Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been 
Your immemorial right, and which I will 
Maintain you in to the last drop of — 



a boar {interrupting him). 



What 



Does any one accuse her of? 



PURGANAX. 

Why, no one 
Makes any positive accusation ; — but 
There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards 
Conceived that it became them to advise 
His Majesty to investigate their truth; — 
Not for his own sake ; he could be content 
To let his wife play any pranks she pleased, 
If, by that sufferance, he could please the pigs ; 
But then he fears the morals of the swine, 
The sows especially, and what effect 
It might produce upon the purity and 
Religion of the rising generation 
Of sucking-pigs, if it could be suspected 
That Queen Iona — [A pause- 

FIRST BOAR. 

Well, go on ; we long- 
To hear what she can possibly have done. 

PURGANAX. 

Why, it is hinted, that a certain bull — 

Thus much is known : — the milk-white bulls that 

feed 
Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes 
Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews 
Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel, 
Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath 
Loading the morning winds until they faint 

With living fragrance, are so beautiful ! 

Well, I say nothing ; — but Europa rode 
On such a one from Asia into Crete, 
And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath 
His gliding beauty. And Pasiphae, 

Iona's grandmother, but she is innocent ! 

And that both you and I, and all assert. 



Most innocent ! 



FIRST BOAR. 
PURGANAX. 

Behold this Bag ; a bag- 



SECOND BOAR. 

Oh ! no Green Bags ! ! Jealousy's eyes are green, 
Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts, 
And verdigris, and — 

PURGANAX. 

Honourable swine, 
In piggish souls can prepossessions reign % 
Allow me to remind you, grass is green — 
All flesh is grass ; — no bacon but is flesh — 
Ye are but bacon. This divining Bag 
(Which is not green, but only bacon colour) 
Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er 
A woman guilty of — we all know what — 
Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind, 
She never can commit the like again. 
If innocent, she will turn into an angel, 
And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits 
As she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal 
Is to convert her sacred Majesty 



Into an angel, (as I am sure we shall do,) 
By pouring on her head this mystic water. 

[Showing the Bag- 
I know that she is innocent ; I wish 
Only to prove her so to all the world. 

FIRST BOAR. 

Excellent, just, and noble Purganax ! 

SECOND BOAR. 

How glorious it will be to see her Majesty 
Flying above our heads, her petticoats 
Streaming like — like — like — 

THIRD BOAR. 

Any thing. 

PURGANAX. 

Oh, no ! 
But like a standard of an admiral's ship, 
Or like the banner of a conquering host, 
Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day, 
Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain ; 
Or like a meteor, or a war- steed's mane, 
Or water-fall from a dizzy precipice 
Scattered upon the wind. 

FIRST BOAR. 

Or a cow's tail, — 

SECOND BOAR. 

Or any thing, as the learned Boar observed. 

PURGANAX. 

Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution, 
That her most sacred Majesty should be 
Invited to attend the feast of Famine, 
And to receive upon her chaste white body 
Dews of Apotheosis from this Bag. 

[A great confusion is heard of the Pigs out of Doors, 
which communicates itself to those within. During 
the first Strophe, the doors of the Sty are staved in, 
and a number of exceedingly lean Pigs and Sows 
and Boars rush in. 

SEMICHORUS I. 

No ! Yes ! 

SEMICHORUS II. 

Yes ! No ! 



SEMICHORUS 



A law I 



SEMICHORUS II. 



A flaw 



SEMICHORUS I. 

Porkers, we shall lose our wash, 
Or must share it with the lean pigs ! 

FIRST BOAR. 

Order ! order ! be not rash ! 
Was there ever such a scene, Pigs ! 

an old sow (rushing in). 
I never saw so fine a dash 
Since I first began to wean pigs. 

second boar [solemnly). 
The Queen will be an angel time enough. 
I vote, in form of an amendment, that 
Purganax rub a little of that stuff 
| Upon his face — 



[88 



(ED I PUS TYR ANNUS ; 



PUBOANAX. 

[His heart is seen to beat through his waistcoat- 

Gods ! What would ye be at I 

S1.MICHORUS I. 

Purganax has plainly shown a 
Cloven foot and jack-daw feather. 

SEMICHOBXIS II. 

I vote Swellfoot and Iona 
Try the magic test together ; 
Whenever royal spouses bicker, 
Both should try the magic liquor. 

ax old boar (aside). 
A miserable state is that of pigs, 
For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs, 
The swine must bite each other's ear therefore. 

ax old sow (aside). 
A wretched lot Jove has assigned to swine, 
Squabbling makes pig- herds hungry, and they dine 
On bacon, and whip sucking-pigs the more. 

CHORUS. 

Hog-wash has been ta'en away : 
If the Bull-Queen is divested, 
We shall be in every way 

Hunted, stript, exposed, molested ; 
Let us do whate'er we may, 
That she shall not be arrested. 
Queen, we entrench you with walls of brawn, 
And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet : 
Place your most sacred person here. We pawn 
Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it. 
Those who wrong you, wrong us ; 
Those who hate you, hate us ; 
Those who sting you, sting us ; 
Those who bait you, bait us ; 
The oracle is now about to be 
Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny ; 
Which says: a Thebes, choose reform or civil war, 
When through your streets, instead of hare with 

dogs, 
A Coxsort Queex shall hunt a Kixg with hogs, 
Riding upon the Ionian Minotaur." 

Enter Iona Taurina 
Iona taurixa (coming forward). 
Gentlemen swine, and gentle lady-pigs, 
The tender heart of every boar acquits 
Their Queex, of any act incongruous 
With native piggishness, and she reposing 
With confidence upon the grunting nation, 
Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all, 
Her innocence, into their hoggish arms ; 
Nor has the expectation been deceived 
Of finding shelter there. Yet know, great boars, 
(For such who ever lives among you finds you, 
And so do I) the innocent are proud ! 
I have accepted your protection only 
In compliment of your kind love and care, 
Not for necessity. The innocent 
Are safest there where trials and dangers wait ; 
Innocent Queens o'er white-hot plough-shares 

tread 
Unsinged ; and ladies, Erin's laureate sings it,* 

* '« Rich and rare were the gems she wore." 

See Moore's Irish Melodies. 



Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still, 
Walked from Killarney to the Giant's Causeway, 
Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry, 
White-boys, and orange-boys, and constables, 
Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured ! 
Thus I !— 

Lord Purganax, I do commit myself 
Into your custody, and am prepared 
To stand the test, whatever it may be ! 

purganax. 
This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty 
Must please the pigs. You cannot fail of being 
A heavenly angel. Smoke your bits of glass, 
Ye loyal swine, or her transfiguration 
Will blind your wondering eyes 

an old boar (aside). 

Take care, my Lord, 
They do not smoke you first. 

PURGANAX. 

At the approaching feast 
Of Famine, let the expiation be. 



Content ! content ! 

iona taurina (aside). 

I, most content of all, 
Know tJ-at my foes even thus prepare their fall ! 

[Exeunt omnes. 



SCENE II. 

The interior of the Temple of Famine. The statue of the 
Goddess, a skeleton clothed in party-coloured rags, seated 
upon a heap of skulls and loaves intermingled. A num- 
ber of exceedingly fat Priests in black garments arrayed 
on each, side, with marrow-bones and cleavers in their 
ha?ids A flourish of trumpets. 

Enter Mammon as Arch-priest, Swellfoot, Dakky, 
Purganax, Laoctonos, followed by Iona Tacrine 
guarded. On the other side enter the Swine. 

CHORUS OF PRIESTS, 
Accompanied by the Court Porkman on marrow-bones 
and cleavers. 
Goddess bare, and gaunt, and pale, 
Empress of the world, all hail ! 
What though Cretans old called thee 
City-crested Cybele ? 
We call thee Famine ! 
Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cram 

ming; 
Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and 

lords, 
Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words, 
The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits, 
Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots — [fat, 

Those who consume these fruits through thee grow 
Those who produce these fruits through thee 
grow lean, 
Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that ! 

And let things be as they have ever been ; 
At least while we remain thy priests, 
And proclaim thy fasts and feasts ! 
Through thee the sacred Swellfoot dynasty 



OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



Is based upon a rock amid that sea 
Whose waves are swine — so let it ever be ! 

[Swellfoot, §c. seat themselves at a table, magnifi- 
cently covered at the upper end of the temple. Atten- 
dants pass over the stage with hog-wash in pails. 
A number of Pigs, exceedingly lean, follow them 
licking up the wash. 

MAMMON. 

I fear your sacred Majesty has lost 

The appetite which you were used to have. 

Allow me now to recommend this dish — 

A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook, 

Such as is served at the great King's second table. 

The price and pains which its ingredients cost, 

Might have maintained some dozen families 

A winter or two — not more — so plain a dish 

Could scarcely disagree. — 

SWELLFOOT. 

After the trial, 
And these fastidious pigs are gone, perhaps 
I may recover my lost appetite, — 
I feel the gout flying about my stomach — 
Give me a glass of Maraschino punch. 

rCRGANAX. 

[Filling his glass, and standing up. 
The glorious constitution of the Pigs ! 

ALL. 

A toast ! a toast ! stand up, and three times three ! 

DAKRY. 

No heel-taps — darken day-lights ! 

LAOCTONOS. 

Claret, somehow, 
Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret ! 

SWELLFOOT. 

Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment, 

But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine, 

And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes. 

(To Purganax.) 
For God's sake stop the grunting of those pigs ! 

PURGANAX. 

We dare not, sire ! 'tis Famine's privilege. 

CHORUS OF SWINE. 

Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine ! 

Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags; 
Thou devil which livest on damning ; 

Saint of new churches, and cant, and Green Bags; 

Till in pity and terror thou risest, 

Confounding the schemes of the wisest. 

When thou liftest thy skeleton form, 

When the loaves and the skulls roll about, 

We will greet thee — the voice of a storm 
Would be lost in our terrible shout ! 

Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine ! 

Hail to thee, Empress of Earth ! 
When thou risest, dividing possessions ; 
When thou risest, uprooting oppressions ; 

In the pride of thy ghastly mirth. 
Over palaces, temples, and graves, 
We will rush as thy minister-slaves, 
Trampling behind in thy train, 
Till all be made level again 1 



MAMMON. 

I hear a crackling of the giant bones 
Of the dread image, and in the black pits 
Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames 
These prodigies are oracular, and show 
The presence of the unseen Deity. 
Mighty events are hastening to their doom ! 

SWELLFOOT. 

I only hear the lean and mutinous swine 
Grunting about the temple. 

DAKRY. 

In a crisis 
Of such exceeding delicacy, I think 
We ought to put her Majesty, the Queen, 
Upon her trial without delay. 



MAMMON. 



The Bag 



Is here. 



PURGANAX. 

I have rehearsed the entire scene 
With an ox-bladder and some ditch-water, 
On Lady P. — it cannot fail. 

[Taking up the bag. 
Your Majesty (to Swellfoot) 
In such a filthy business had better 
Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you. 
A spot or two on me would do no harm ; 
Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad 

genius 
Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell, 
Upon my brow — which would stain all its seas, 
But which those seas could never wash away ' 

IONA TAURINA. 

My Lord, I am ready — nay I am impatient, 
To undergo the test. 

[A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes 
unnoticed through the Temple ; the word Liberty 
is seen through the veil, as if it were written in fire 
upon its forehead. Its words are almost drowned in 
the furious grunting of the Pigs, and the business 
of the trial. She kneels on the steps of the Altar, 
and speaks in tones at first faint andlow, but which 
ever become wuder and louder. 

Mighty Empress f Death's white wife ! 

Ghastly mother-in-law of life ! 

By the God who made thee such, 

By the magic of thy touch, 

By the starving and the cramming, 
Of fasts and feasts ! — by thy dread self, Famine! 
I charge thee ! when thou wake the multitude, 
Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood. 
The earth did never mean her foizon 
For those who crown life's cup with poison 
Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge — 

But for those radiant spirits, who are still 
The standard-bearers in the van of Change. 

Be they th' appointed stewards, to fill 
The lap of Pain, and toil, and Age ! — 
Remit, Queen ! thy accustom'd rage ! 
Be what thou art nm ! In voice faint and low 
Freedom calls Fe nine, — her eternal foe, 
To brief alliance^ hollow truce. — Rise now ! 

[Whilst the veiled Figure has been chaunting this 
strophe, Mammon, Dakry, Laoctonos, and Swell- 



1:)0 



CEDIPUS TYRANNUS; OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT. 



foot, have surrounded Iona Taurina, who, with 
her hands folded o>i her breast, and her eyes lifted 
to Heaven, stand.'!, as with saint-like resignation, 
to wait the issue of the business, in perfeet confi- 
dence if her innocence. 

Purganax. after unsealing the Green Bag, is gravely 
about to pour the liquor upon her head, when sud- 
denly the whole expression of her figure and coun- 
tenance changes i she snatches it from his hand 
with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over 
Swellfoot and his whole Court, who arc instantly 
changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, 
and rush out of the Temple. The image of Famine 
then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs 
begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped 
up by the sculls ; all those who eat the loaves are 
turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly 
behind the altar. The image o/Famine sinks through 
a chasm in the earth, and a Minotaur rises- 



MINOTAUR. 

I ain the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest 

Of all Europa's taurine progeny — 

I am the old traditional man bull ; 

And from my ancestors having been Ionian, 

I am called Ion, which, by interpretation, 

Is John ; in plain Theban, that is to say, 

My name's John Bull ; I am a famous hunter, 

And can leap any gate in all Bceotia, 

Even the palings of the royal park, 

Or double ditch about the new inclosures ; 

And if your Majesty will deign to mount me, 

At least till you have hunted down your game, 

I will not throw you. 



iona taurina. 

[During this speech she has been putting 07i boots and 
spurs, and a hunting-cap, buckish/y cocked on one 
side, and tucking up her hair, she leaps nimbly on 
his back. 

Hoa ! hoa ! tallyho ! tallyho ! ho ! ho ! 
Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down, 
These stinking foxes, these devouring otters, 
These hares, these wolves, these any thing but men. 
Hey, for a whipper-in ! my loyal pigs, 
Now let your noses be as keen as beagles', 
Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries 
More dulcet and symphonious than the bells 
Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday ; 
Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music. 
Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood ?) 
But such as they gave you. Tallyho ! ho ! 
Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert, 
Pursue the ugly beasts ! tallyho ! ho ! 

FULL CHORUS OF IONA AND THE SWINE. 

Tallyho ! tallyho ! 
Through rain, hail, and snow, 
Through brake, gorse, and briar, 
Through fen, flood, and mire, 

We go ! we go ! 

Tallyho ! tallyho ! 
Through pond, ditch, and slough, 
Wind them, and find them, 
Like the Devil behind them, 

Tallyho ! tallyho ! 
[Exeunt, in full cry ,• Iona driving on the Swine, 
with the empty Green Bag. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON CEDIPUS TYR ANNUS. 



191 



NOTE ON (EDIPUS TYRANNUS. 

BY THE EDITOR. 



In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find 
recorded, in August 1820, Shelley "begins Swell- 
foot the Tyrant, suggested by the pigs at the fair of 
San Giuliano." This was the period of Queen Caro- 
line's landing in England, and the struggles made 
by Geo. IV. to get rid of her claims ; which fail- 
ing, Lord Castlereagh placed the " Green Bag" 
on the table of the House of Commons, demanding, 
in the King's name, that an inquiry should be in- 
stituted into his wife's conduct. These circum- 
stances were the theme of all conversation among 
the English. We were then at the Baths of San 
Giuliano ; a friend came to visit us on the day 
when a fair was held in the square, beneath our 
windows : Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty ; 
and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of 
a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. 
He compared it to the " chorus of frogs " in the 
satiric drama of Aristophanes ; and it being an 
hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association 
suggesting another, he imagined a political satirical 
drama on the circumstances of the day, to which 
the pigs would serve as chorus — and Swellfoot was 
begun. When finished, it was transmitted to 
England, printed and published anonymously ; 
but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by 
the " Society for the Suppression of Vice," who 
threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately 
withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble 
of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth 
the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was 
laid aside- 



Hesitation of whether it would do honour to 
Shelley prevented my publishing it at first ; but 
I cannot bring myself to keep back anything 
he ever wrote, for each word is fraught with the 
peculiar views and sentiments which he believed 
to be beneficial to the human race ; and the bright 
light of poetry irradiates every thought. The 
world has a right to the entire compositions of 
such a man ; for it does not live and thrive by 
the out-worn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, 
but by the original free thoughts of men of Genius, 
who aspire to pluck bright truth 



" from the pale-faced moon; 

Or dive into the bottom of the deep, 

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, 

And pluck up drowned — " 

truth. Even those who may dissent from his 
opinions will consider that he was a man of genius, 
and that the world will take more interest in his 
slightest word, than from the waters of Lethe, 
which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all 
its wrongs and woes. This drama, however, must 
not be judged for more than was meant. It is 
a mere plaything of the imagination, which even 
may not excite smiles among many, who will not 
see wit in those combinations of thought which 
were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, 
like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep 
sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indig- 
nation against its oppressors, which make it worthy 
of his name. 



EARLY POEMS. 



MUTABILITY. 

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ; 

How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, 
Streaking the darkness radiantly ! — yet soon 

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever : 

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings 
Give various response to each varying blast, 

To whose frail frame no second motion brings 
One mood or modulation like the last. 

We rest — A dream has power to poison sleep ; 

We rise — One wandering thought pollutes the 
day; 
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep ; 

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away : 

It is the same ! — For, be it joy or sorrow, 
The path of its departure still is free ; 

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow ; 
Nought may endure but Mutability. 



ON DEATH. 



There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wis- 
dom, in the grave, whither thou goest. — Ecclesiac^tes. 



The pale, the cold, and the moony smile 
Which the meteor beam of a starless night 

Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, 

Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light, 

Is the flame of life so fickle and wan 

That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. 

man ! hold thee on in courage of soul • 

Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, 

And the billows of cloud that around thee roll 
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, 

Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free 

To the universe of destiny. 

This world is the nurse of all we know, 
This world is the mother of all we feel, 

And the coming of death is a fearful blow, 

To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel ; 

When all that we know, or feel, or see, 

Shall pass like an unreal mystery. 



The secret things of the grave are there, 
Where all but this frame must surely be, 

Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous 
No longer will five to hear or to see [ear 

All that is great and all that is strange 

In the boundless realm of unending change. 

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death ? 

Who lifteth the veil of what is to come ? 
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath 

The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb ? 
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be 
With the fears and the love for that which we see ? 



A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH- YARD, 

LECHDALE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 

The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere 
Each vapour that obscured the sun-set's ray ; 

And pallid evening twines its beaming hair 

In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day : 

Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men, 

Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. 

They breathe their spells towards the departing day, 
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea ; 

Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway, 
Responding to the charm with its own mystery. 

The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass 

Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. 

Thou too, aerial Pile ! whose pinnacles 

Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, 

Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, 
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant 

Around whose lessening and invisible height [spire, 

Gather among the stars the clouds of night. 

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres : 

And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, 

Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, 
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things 
around, 

And mingling with the still night and mute sky 

Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. 

Thus solemnised and softened, death is mild 
And terrorless as this serenest night : 

Here could I hope, like some inquiring child 
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human 

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sjeep [sight 

That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. 



EARLY POEMS. 



193 



rjiQ * * * *_ 

AAKPTEI AIOI2H nOTMON AnOTMON. 

Oh ! there are spirits in the air, 

And genii of the evening breeze, 
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair 
As star-beams among twilight trees : — 
Such lovely ministers to meet 
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet. 

With mountain winds, and babbling springs, 

And mountain seas, that are the voice 
Of these inexplicable things, 

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice 
When they did answer thee ; but they 
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away. 

And thou hast sought in starry eyes 

Beams that were never meant for thine, 
Another's wealth ; — tame sacrifice 
To a fond faith ! stiil dost thou pine ? 
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, 
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands ? 

Ah ! wherefore didst thou build thine hope 

On the false earth's inconstancy 1 
Did thine own mind afford no scope 
Of love, or moving thoughts to thee 1 
That natural scenes or human smiles 
Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles. 

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled 

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted ; 
The glory of the moon is dead ; 

Night's ghost and dreams have now departed : 
Thine own soul still is true to thee, 
But changed to a foul fiend through misery. 

This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever 

Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, 
Dream not to chase ; — the mad endeavour 
Would scourge thee to severer pangs. 
Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, 
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. 



STANZAS.— APRIL, 1814. 

Away ! the moor is dark beneath the moon, 
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of 
even : 
Away ! the gathering winds will call the darkness 
soon, 
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene 
lights of heaven. 
Pause not ! The time is past ! Every voice cries, 
Away ! 
Tempt not with one last glance thy friend's un- 
gentle mood : 
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not 
entreat thy stay : 
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. 



Away, away ! to thy sad and silent home ; 

Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth ; 
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and 
come, 
And complicate strange webs of melancholy 
mirth. 
The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float 
around thine head, 
The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath 
thy feet : 
But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost 
that binds the dead, 
Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere 
thou and peace may meet. 

The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own 
repose, 
For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is 
in the deep ; 
Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean 
knows ; 
Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its 
appointed sleep. 
Thou in the grave shalt rest — yet till the phantoms 
flee 
Which that house and heath and garden made 
dear to thee erewhile, 
Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep 
musings, are not free 
From the music of two voices, and the light of 
one sweet smile. 



LINES. 

The cold earth slept below, 
Above the cold sky shone, 

And all around 

With a chilling sound, 
From caves of ice and fields of snow, 
The breath of night like death did flow 

Beneath the sinking moon. 

The wintry hedge was black, 
The green grass was not seen, 

The birds did rest 

On the bare thorn's breast, 
Whose roots, beside the pathway track, 
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack 

Which the frost had made between. 

Thine eyes glowed in the glare 
Of the moon's dying light, 

As a fen-fire's beam 

On a sluggish stream 
Gleams dimly — so the moon shone there, 
And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair, 

That shook in the wind of night. 

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved ; 
The wind made thy bosom chill ; 

The night did shed 

On thy dear head 
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie 
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky 

Might visit thee at will. 
November, 1815. 



UU 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS. 



TO WORDSWORTH. 

Pon of Nature, thou hast wept to know 
That things depart which never may retain ; 
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first 

glow, 
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. 
These oommon woes I feel. One loss is mine, 
Which thou too feel'st ; yot 1 alone deplore. 
ThOQ wort as ■ lono star, whoso light did shine 
On some frail hark in wintor's midnight roar : 
Thou hast like to a rook-built refuge stood 
Above the blind and battling multitude : 
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave 
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, — 

rting these, thou leavest me to grieve, 
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. 



FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE 
FALL OF BONAPARTE. 

I hated thee, fallen tyrant ! I did groan 

To think that a most unambitious slave, 

Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave 

Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne 

Where it had stood even now : thou didst prefer 

A frail and bloody pomp, which time has swept 

In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre, 

For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, 

Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust, 

And stifled thee, their minister. I know 

Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, 

That Virtue owns a more eternal foe 

Than force or fraud : old Custom, legal Crime, 

And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of time. 



NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS. BY THE EDITOR. 



The remainder of Shelley's Poems will be 
arranged in the order in which they were written. 
Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of 
the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of 
these were thrown aside, and I never saw them 
till I had the misery of looking over his writings, 
after the hand that traced them was dust ; and 
some were in the hands of others, and I never saw 
them till now. The subjects of the poems are 
often to me an unerring guide ; but on other 
occasions, I can only guess, by finding them in the 
pages of the same manuscript book that contains 
poems with the date of whose composition I am 
fully conversant. In the present arrangement all 
his poetical translations will be placed together at 
the end of the volume. 

The loss of his early papers prevents my being 
able to give any of the poetry of his boyhood. Of 
the few I give as early poems, the greater part 
were published with " Alastor ;" some of them 
were written previously, some at the same period. 
The poem beginning, " Oh, there are spirits in the 
air," was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he 
never knew ; and at whose character he could only 
guess imperfectly, through his writings, and 
accounts he heard of him from some who knew 
him well. He regarded his change of opinions as 
rather an act of will than conviction, and believed 
that in his inner heart he would be haunted by 
what Shelley considered the better and holier 
aspirations of his youth The summer evening 
that suggested to him the poem written in the 
churchyard of Lechdale, occurred during his 



voyage up the Thames, in the autumn of 1815 
He had been advised by a physician to live as 
much as possible in the open air ; and a fortnight 
of a bright warm July was spent in tracing the 
Thames to its source. He never spent a season 
more tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He 
had just recovered from a severe pulmonary attack ; 
the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived 
near Windsor Forest, and his life was spent under 
its shades, or on the water ; meditating subjects 
for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at 
extending his political doctrines j and attempted 
so to do by appeals, in prose essays, to the people, 
exhorting them to claim their rights ; but he had 
now begun to feel that the time for action was not 
ripe in England, and that the pen was the only 
instrument wherewith to prepare the way for 
better things. 

In the scanty journals kept during those years, 
I find a record of the books that Shelley read 
during several years. During the years of 1814 
and 1815, the list is extensive. It includes in 
Greek ; Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus — the histories 
of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes 
Laertius. In Latin ; Petronius, Suetonius, some 
of the works of Cicero, a large proportion of those 
of Seneca and Livy. In English ; Milton's Poems, 
Wordsworth's Excursion, Southey's Madoc and 
Thalaba, Locke on the Human Understanding, 
Bacon's Novum Organum. In Italian, Ariosto, 
Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the Reveries d'un 
Solitaire of Rousseau. To these may be added 
severalmodern books of travels. He read few novels. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVI. 



THE SUNSET. 

There late was One, within whose subtle being, 
As light and wind within some delicate cloud 
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, 
Genius and death contended. None may know 
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath 
Fail, like the trances of the summer air, 
When, with the Lady of his love, who then 
First knew the unreserve of mingled being, 
He walked along the pathway of a field, 
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, 
But to the west was open to the sky. 
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold 
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points 
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers, 
And the old dandelion's hoary beard, 
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay 
On the brown massy woods — and in the east 
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose 
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, 
While the faint stars were gathering overhead. — 
" Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth, 
" I never saw the sun % We will walk here 
To-morrow ; thou shalt look on it with me." 
That night the youth and lady mingled lay 
In love and sleep — but when the morning came 
The lady found her lover dead and cold. 
Let none believe that God in mercy gave 
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild, 
But year by year lived on — in truth I think 
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles* 
And that she did not die, but lived to tend 
Her aged father, were a kind of madness, 
If madness 'tis to be unlike the world. 
For but to see her were to read the tale 
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts 
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief ; — . 
Her eye-lashes were torn away with tears, 
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead — so pale; 
Her hands were thin, and through their wandering 

veins 
And weak articulations might be seen 
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self 
Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day, 
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee I 

" Inheritor of more than earth can give, 
Passionless calm and silence unreproved, 
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep ! but rest, 
And are the uncomplaining things they seem, 
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love ; 
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were — Peace !" 
This was the only moan she ever made. 



HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 

The awful shadow of some unseen Power 
Floats tho' unseen among us ; visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower : 

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain 
It visits with inconstant glance [shower, 

Each human heart and countenance ; 

Like hues and harmonies of evening, 

Like clouds in starlight widely spread, 

Like memory of music fled, 

Like aught that for its grace may be 

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate 

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? 

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, 

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? 
Ask why the sunlight not for ever 
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river ; 

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown; 
Why fear and dream and death and birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom ; why man has such a scope 

For love and hate, despondency and hope ; 

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 
To sage or poet these responses given : 
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and 
Heaven, 

Remain the records of their vain endeavour ; 

Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail 
From all we hear and all we see, [to sever, 
Doubt, chance, and mutability. 

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, 
Or music by the night wind sent 
Through strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 

Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart 
And come, for some uncertain moments lent. 
Man were immortal and omnipotent, 

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his 
Thou messenger of sympathies [heart. 

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes ; 

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, 
Like darkness to a dying flame ! 
Depart not as thy shadow came : 
Depart not, lest the grave should be, 
Like life and fear, a dark reality. 
o 2 



196 



TOEMS WRITTEN IN 1810. 



While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, ami sped 

Thro' many a listening chamber, oave,and ruin, 

Ami starlight wood, with fearful stops pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
1 called on poisonous names with which our youth 

I was not hoard, 1 saw thoin not ; [is fed : 

When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at that sw vet time when winds are wooing 

All vital things that wake to hring 

News o\' birds and blossoming, 

Sadden, thy shadow- fell on me ; 
1 shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstacy ! 

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 

To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow 1 
"With boating heart and streaming eyes, even 

T call the phantoms of a thousand hours [now 

Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned 
Of studious zeal or love's delight [bowers 
Outwatched with me the envious night : 

They know that never joy illumed my brow, 
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
This world from its dark slavery, 
That thou, O awful Loveliness, 

Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 

The day becomes more solemn and serene 
When noon is past : there is a harmony 
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 

Which thro' the summer is not heard nor seen, 

As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! 
Thus let thy power, which like the truth 
Of nature on my passive youth 

Descended, to my onward life supply 
Its calm, to one who worships thee, 
And every form containing thee, 
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 

To fear himself, and love all human kind. 



MONT BLANC. 

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. 



The everlasting universe of things 

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, 

Now dark — now glittering — now reflecting gloom — 

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs 

The source of human thought its tribute brings 

Of waters, — with a sound but half its own, 

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume 

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, 

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river 

Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. 



Thus thou, Ravine of Arve — dark, deep Ravine — 
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale, 
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail 
Fast clouds, shadows, and sunbeams ; awful scene, 
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down 
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, 
Bursting through these darkmountains like the flame 
Of lightning through the tempest ;— thou dost lie, 
The giant brood of pines around thee clinging, 
Children of elder time, in whose devotion, 



The chainless winds still come and ever came 

To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging 

To hear — an old and solemn harmony : 

Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep 

Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil 

Robes some unsculptured image ; the strange sleep 

Which, when the voices of the desert fail, 

Wraps all in its own deep eternity ; — 

Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion 

A loud, lone sound, no other sound can tame ; 

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, 

Thou art the path of that unresting sound — 

Dizzy Ravine ! and when I gaze on thee, 

I seem as in a trance sublime and strange 

To muse on my own separate fantasy, 

My own, my human mind, which passively 

Now renders and receives fast influencings, 

Holding an unremitting interchange 

With the clear universe of things around ; 

One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 

Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 

Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, 

In the still cave of the witch Poesy, 

Seeking among the shadows that pass by 

Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, 

Some phantom, some faint image ; till the breast 

From which they fled recalls them, thou art there ! 



Some say that gleams of a remoter world 

Visit the soul in sleep, — that death is slumber, 

And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber 

Of those who wake and live. I look on high ; 

Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled 

The veil of life and death ? or do I lie 

In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep 

Speed far around and inaccessibly 

Its circles ? For the very spirit fails, 

Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep 

That vanishes among the viewless gales ! 

Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, 

Mount Blanc appears, — still, snowy, and serene 

Its subject mountains their unearthly forms 
Pile around it, ice and rock ; broad vales between 
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, 
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread 
And wind among the accumulated steeps ; 
A desert peopled by the storms alone, 
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, 
And the wolf tracks her there — how hideously 
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high, 
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. — Is this the scene 
Where the old Earthquake-demon taught her young 
Ruin ? Were these their toys ? or did a sea 
Of fire envelop once this silent snow ? 
None can reply — all seems eternal now. 
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue 
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, 
So solemn, so serene, that man may be 
But for such faith with nature reconciled ; 
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal 
Large codes of fraud and woe ; not understood, 
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good, 
Interpret or make felt, or deeply feel. 



The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, 
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell 
Within the daedal earth ; lightning, and rain, 
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816. 



197 



The torpor of the year when feeble dreams 
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep 
Holds every future leaf and flower, — the bound 
With which from that detested trance they leap ; 
The works and ways of man, their death and birth, 
And that of him, and all that his may be ; 
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound 
Are born and die, revolve, subside, and swell. 
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, 
Remote, serene, and inaccessible : 
And this, the naked countenance of earth, 
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains, 
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep, 
Like snakes that watch their prey,from their far f oun- 
Slowly rolling on ; there, many a precipice [tains, 
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power 
Have piled — dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, 
A city of death, distinct with many a tower 
And wall impregnable of beaming ice. 
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin 
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky 
Rolls its perpetual stream ; vast pines are strewing 
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil 
Branchless and shattered stand ; the rocks, drawn 
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown [down 
The limits of the dead and living world, 
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place 
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil ; 
Their food and their retreat for ever gone, 
So much of life and joy is lost. The race 



Of man flies far in dread ; his work and dwelling 
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, 
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves 
Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam, 
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling 
Meet in the Vale, and one majestic River, 
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever 
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, 
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. 



Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: — the power is there, 
The still and solemn power of many sights 
And many sounds, and much of life and death. 
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, 
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend 
Upon that Mountain ; none beholds them there, 
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, [tend 
Or the star-beams dart through them:— Winds con- 
Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath 
Rapid and strong, but silently ! Its home 
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes 
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods 
Over the snow. The secret strength of things, 
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee ! 
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, 
If to the human mind's imaginings 
Silence and solitude were vacancy ? 
Switzerland, June 23. 1816. 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816. BY THE EDITOR. 



Shelley wrote little during this year. The 
Poem entitled the " Sunset" was written in the 
spring of the year, while still residing at Bishops- 
gate. He spent the summer on the shores of the 
Lake of Geneva. " The Hymn to Intellectual 
Beauty" was conceived during his voyage round 
the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself 
during this voyage, by reading the Nouvelle Heloise 
for the first time. The reading it on the very spot 
where the scenes are laid, added to the interest ; 
and he was at once surprised and charmed by 
the passionate eloquence and earnest enthralling 
interest that pervades this work. There was some- 
thing in the character of Saint-Preux, in his 
abnegation of self, and in the worship he paid to 
Love, that coincided with Shelley's own disposi- 
tion ; and, though differing in many of the views, 
and shocked by others, yet the effect of the whole 
was fascinating and delightful. 

" Mont Blanc" was inspired by a view of that 
mountain and its surrounding peaks and valleys, 
as he fingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way 
through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes 
the following mention of this poem in his publica- 
tion of the History of Six Weeks' Tour, and Let- 
ters from Switzerland : — 



" The poem entitled * Mont Blanc,' is written 
by the author of the two letters from Chamouni 
and Vevai. It was composed under the immediate 
impression of the deep and powerful feelings ex- 
cited by the objects which it attempts to describe ; 
and as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, 
rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to 
imitate the untameable wildness and inaccessible 
solemnity from which those feelings sprang." 

This was an eventful year, and less time was 
given to study than usual. In the list of his read- 
ing I find, in Greek : Theocritus, the Prometheus 
of .ZEsehylus, several of Plutarch's Lives and the 
works of Lucian. In Latin : Lucretius, Pliny's 
Letters, the Annals and Germany of Tacitus. In 
French : the History of the French Revolution, 
by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this 
year, Montaigne's Essays, and regarded them ever 
after as one of the most delightful and instructive 
books in the world. The list is scanty in English 
works — Locke's Essay, Political Justice, and 
Coleridge's Lay Sermon, form nearly the whole. 
It was his frequent habit to read aloud to me in 
the evening ; in this way we read, this year, the 
New Testament, Paradise Lost, Spenser's Fairy 
Queen, and Don Quixote. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVII. 



PRINCE ATHANASE. 

A FRAGMENT. 



There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel, 
Hail grown quite weak and grey before his time ; 
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel 

Which burned within him, withering up his 

prime 
And goading him, like fiends, from land to land. 
Not his the load of any secret crime, 

For nought of ill his heart could understand, 
But pity and wild sorrow for the same ; 
Not his the thirst for glory or command, 

Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame ; 
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast, 
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame, 

Had left within his soul the dark unrest : 
Nor what religion fables of the grave 
Feared he, — Philosophy's accepted guest. 

For none than he a purer heart could have, 

Or that loved good more for itself alone ; 

Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave. 

What sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown, 
Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind? — 
If with a human sadness he did groan, 

He had a gentle yet aspiring mind ; 
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed ; 
And such a glorious consolation find 

In others' joy, when all their own is dead : 
He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief, 
And yet, unlike all others, it is said 

That from such toil he never found relief. 
Although a child of fortune and of power, 
Of an ancestral name the orphan chief, 

His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower 
Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate 
Apart from men, as in a lonely tower, 

Pitying the tumult of their dark estate. — 

Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse 

The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate 



Those false opinions which the harsh rich use 
To blind the world they famish for their pride ; 
Nor did he hold from any man his dues, 

But, like a steward in honest dealings tried, 
With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise, 
His riches and his cares he did divide. 

Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise, 
Whathe dared do or think, though men might start, 
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes ; 

Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart, 
And to his many friends — all loved him well — 
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart, 

If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell ; 
If not, he smiled or wept ; and his weak foes 
He neither spurned nor hated — though with fell 

And mortal hate their thousand voices rose, 
They past like aimless arrows from his ear. — 
Nor did his heart or mind its portal close 

To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere 
May comprehend within its wide array. 
What sadness made that vernal spirit sere ? 

He knew not. Though his life day after day, 
Was failing, like an unreplenished stream, 
Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay, 

Through which his soul, like "Vesper's serene beam 
Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds, 
Shone, softly burning ; though his lips did seem 

Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods ; 
And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour, 
Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes, 

Were driven within him by some secret power, 
Which bade them blaze, and five, and roll afar, 
Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower, 

O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war 

Is levied by the night-contending winds, 

And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear ; — 

Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends 
Which wake and feed on everliving woe, — 
What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds 

A mirror found, — he knew not — none could know; 
But on whoe'er might question him he turned 
The light of his frank eyes, as if to show 



PRINCE ATHANASE. 



190 



He knew not of the grief within that burned, 
But asked forbearance with a mournful look ; 
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned 

The cause of his disquietude ; or shook 

With spasms of silent passion ; or turned pale : 

So that his friends soon rarely undertook 

To stir his secret pain without avail ; — 

For all who knew and loved him then perceived 

That there was drawn an adamantine veil 

Between his heart and mind, — both unrelieved 
Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife, 
Some said that he was mad, others beheved 

That memories of an antenatal life 

Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell : 

And others said that such mysterious grief 

From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell 
On souls like his, which owned no higher law 
Than love ; love calm, steadfast, invincible 

By mortal fear or supernatural awe ; 
And others, — " 'Tis the shadow of a dream 
Which the veiled eye of memory never saw, 

" But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream 
Through shattered mines and caverns underground 
Rolls, shaking its foundations ; and no beam 

" Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned 
In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure. 
Soon its exhausted waters will have found 

a A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, 
O Athanase !— in one so good and great, 
Evil or tumult cannot long endure." 

So spake they : idly of another's state 
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy : 
This was their consolation ; such debate 

Men held with one another ; nor did he, 
Like one who labours with a human woe, 
Decline this talk ; as if its theme might be 

Another, not himself, he to and fro 
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit ; 
And none but those who loved him best could 
know 

That which he knew not, how it galled and bit 
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold ; 
For like an eyeless night-mare grief did sit 

Upon his being ; a snake which fold by fold 
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend 
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier 

hold ;_- 
And so his srief remained — let it remain — untold*. 



* The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the 
ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in 
an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his con- 
ceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid 
character. The reader will judge whether lie is a loser or 
gainer by this difference — Author's Note. 



FRAGMENTS* OF PRINCE ATHANASE. 

PART II. 

FRAGMENT I. 

Prince Athanase had one beloved friend, 

An old, old man, with hair of silver white, [blend 

And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and 

With his wise words ; and eyes whose arrowy light 
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds. 
He was the last whom superstition's blight 

Had spared in Greece — the blight that cramps and 
And in his olive bower at GEnoe [blinds, — 

Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds 

A fertile island in the barren sea, 

One mariner who has survived his mates 

Many a drear month in a great ship — so he 

With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates 

Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being : 

" The mind becomes that which it contemplates," — 

And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing 

Their bright creations, grew like wisest men ; 

And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing 

A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then, 

O sacred Hellas ! many weary years 

He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen 

Was grass-grown — and the unremembered tears 
Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief, 
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears : — 

And as the lady looked with faithful grief 
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path, 
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief 

And blighting hope, who with the news of death 
Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight, 
She saw beneath the chesnuts, far beneath, 

An old man toiling up, a weary wight ; 

And soon within her hospitable hall 

She saw his white hairs glittering in the fight 

* The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was 
a good deal modelled on Alastor. In the first sketch of the 
Poem he named it Pandemos and Urania. Athanase seeks 
through the world the One whom he may love. He meets, 
in the ship in Which he is embarked, a lady, who appears 
to him to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But 6he 
proves to be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus, 
who, after disappointing his cherished dreams and hopes, 
deserts him. Athanase, crushed by sorrow, pines and dies. 
" On his death-bed the lady, who can really reply to his 
soul, comes and kisses his lips."— The Death-bed of Atha- 
nase. The poet describes her— 

Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown, 
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam, 
Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon ; 

Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came 
The light from them, as when tears of delight 
Double the western planet's serene frame. 

This slender note is all we have to aid our imagination in 
shaping out the form of the poem, such as its author imaged 
-Jf S. 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



Of the wood tiro, ami round his shouldors fall, 

Ami his wan rings ami liis withered mien, 

Yot calm ami gentle ami majesties! 

Ami Athaiuw\ hor ohild, who must havo been 

Then three Teen old, sate opposite ami gased 
In petient ulenee. 



FRAGMENT II. 

SuCB was Zonoras ; and as daylight finds 
< >no amaranth glittering on the path of frost, 
When autumn nights have nipt all weaker kinds, 

Thus through his ago, dark, cold, and tempest-tost, 
Shone truth upon Zonoras ; and he filled 
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost, 

The spirit of Px*ince Athanase, a child, 
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore 
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild. 

And sweet and subtle talk now evermore, 
The pupil and the master shared ; until, 
Sharing that undiminishable store, 

The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill 
j Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran 
His teacher, and did teach with native skill 

i Strange truths and new to that experienced man. 
Still they were friends, as few have ever been 
Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span. 

j So in the caverns of the forest green, 
Or by the rocks of echoing ocean hoar, 
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen 

; By summer woodmen ; and when winter's roar 

Sounded o'er earth and. sea its blast of war, 
1 The Balearic fisher, driven from shore, 

Hanging upon the peaked wave afar, 

Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam, 

Piercing the stormy darkness, like a star 

Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam, 

Whilst all the constellations of the sky 

Seemed reeling through the storm ; they did but 



For, lo ! the wintry clouds are all gone by, 

And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing, 

And far o'er southern waves, immoveably 

Belted Orion hangs — warm light is flowing 
From the young moon into the sunset's chasm. — 
u summer eve ! with power divine, bestowing 

" On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm 
Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness, 
Filling the sky like light ! How many a spasm 

" Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and mad- 
Were lulled by thee, delightful nightingale ! [ness, 
And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness, 



" Ami the far sighings of yon piny dale 
Made vocal by some wind, we feel not here. — 
1 bear alone what nothing may avail 

" To lighten — a strange load ! " — No human ear 
Heard this lament ; but o'er the visage wan 
Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere 

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran, 
Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake, 
Glassy and dark. — And that divine old man 

Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake, 
Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest — 
And with a calm and measured voice he spake, 

And, with a soft and equal pressure, prest 

That cold lean hand : — " Dost thou remember yet 

When the curved moon then lingering in the west 

" Paused, in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, 
How in those beams we walked,half resting on the sea ? 
'Tis just one year — sure thou dost not forget — 

" Then Plato's words of light in thee and me 
Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east, 
For we had just then read — thy memory 

" Is faithful now — the story of the feast ; 

And Agathon and Diotima seemed 

From death and dark forgetfulness released." 



FRAGMENT m. 

'Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings 
From slumber, as a sphered angel's child, 
Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings, 

Stands up before its mother bright and mild, 
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems — 
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled 

To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams, 
The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove 
Waxed green — and flowers burst forth like starry 
beams ; — 

The grass in the warm sun did start and move, 
And sea-buds burst beneath the waves serene :— 
How many a one, though none be near to love, 

Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen 
In any mirror — or the spring's young minions, 
The winged leaves amid the copses green ; — 

How many a spirit then puts on the pinions 
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast, 
And his own steps — and over wide dominions 

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast, 
More fleet than storms — the wide world shrinks 
When winter and despondency are past, [below, 

'Twas at this season that Prince Athanase 
Pass'd the white Alps—those eagle-baffling moun- 
tains 
Slept in their shrouds of snow ;— beside the ways 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



'201 



The waterfalls were voiceless — for their fountains 
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now, 
Or by the curdling winds like brazen wings 

Which clanged along the mountain's marblebrow- 
Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung 
And filled with frozen light the chasm below. 



FRAGMENT IV. 

Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all 
We can desire, Love ! and happy souls, 
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall, 

Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls 
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew ; 
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls 

Investest it ; and when the heavens are blue 
Thou fillest them ; and when the earth is fair, 
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue 

Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear 
Beauty like some bright robe ; — thou ever soarest 
Among the towers of men, and as soft air 

In spring, which moves the unawakened forest, 
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak, 
Thou floatest among men ; and aye implorest 

That which from thee they should implore : — the 

weak 
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts 
The strong have broken — yet where shall any seek 

A garment whom thou clothest not ? 
Marlow, 1817. 



MARIANNE'S DREAM. 



A pale dream came to a Lady fair, 
And said, A boon, a boon, I pray ! 

I know the secrets of the air ; 

And things are lost in the glare of day, 

Which I can make the sleeping see, 

If they will put their trust in me. 

And thou shalt know of things unknown, 
If thou wilt let me rest between 

The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown 
Over thine eyes so dark and sheen : 

And half in hope, and half in fright, 

The Lady closed her eyes so bright. 

At first all deadly shapes were driven 
Tumultously across her sleep, 

And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven 
All ghastly- visaged clouds did sweep ; 

And the Lady ever looked to spy 

If the gold sun shone forth on high. 



And as towards the east she turned, 

She saw aloft in the morning air, 
Which now with hues of sunrise burned, 

A great black Anchor rising there ; 
And wherever the Lady turned her eyes 
It hung before her in the skies. 

The sky was blue as the summer sea, 
The depths were cloudless over head. 

The air was calm as it could be, 

There was no sight nor sound of dread, 

But that black Anchor floating still 

Over the piny eastern hill. 

The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear, 

To see that Anchor ever hanging, 
And veiled her eyes ; she then did hear 

The sound as of a dim low clanging, 
And looked abroad if she might know 
Was it aught else, or but the flow 
Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro. 

There was a mist in the sunless air, 

Which shook as it were with an earthquake's 
But the very weeds that blossomed there [shock, 

Were moveless, and each mighty rock 
Stood on its basis stedfastly ; 
The Anchor was seen no more on high. 

But piled around with summits hid 

In lines of cloud at intervals, 
Stood many a mountain pyramid 

Among whose everlasting walls 
Two mighty cities shone, and ever 
Through the red mist their domes did quiver. 

On two dread mountains, from whose crest, 
Might seem, the eagle for her brood 

Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest 
Those tower-encircled cities stood. 

A vision strange such towers to see, 

Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously, 

Where human art could never be. 

And columns framed of marble white, 

And giant fanes, dome over dome 
Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright 

With workmanship, which could not come 
From touch of mortal instrument, 
Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent 
From its own shapes magnificent. 

But still the Lady heard that clang 

Filling the wide air far away ; 
And still the mist whose light did hang 

Among the mountains shook alway, 
So that the Lady's heart beat fast, 
As half in joy and half aghast, 
On those high domes her look she cast. 

Sudden from out that city sprung 

A light that made the earth grow red ; 

Two flames that each with quivering tongue 
Licked its high domes, and over-head 

Among those mighty towers and fanes 

Dropped fire, as a volcano rains 

Its sulphurous ruin on the plains. 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



And h:irk ! I rush, as it' the deep 

Had bunt its bonds ; she looked behind 

And saw over the western steep 

ring tlood deseend, and wind 

Through that wide vale : she felt no tear, 
1 within herself, "Tis clear 

These towers are Nature's own. and she 

To save them lias sent forth the sea. 



And now those raging billows came 
Where that fair Lady sate, and she 
rue towards the showering Same 

Bj the wild waves heaped tumultuously, 
And, on a little plank, the How 
Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro. 

The waves were fiercely vomited 
From every tower and every dome, 

And dreary tight did widely shed 

O'er that vast flood's suspended foam, 

Beneath the smoke which hung its night 

On the stained cope of heaven's light. 

The plank whereon that Lady sate 

Was driven through the chasms, about and 
about, 
Between the peaks so desolate 

Of the drowning mountain, in and out, 
As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails — 
While the flood was filling those hollow vales. 



At last her plank an eddy crost, 
And bore her to the city's wall, 

Which now the flood had reached almost; 
It might the stoutest heart appal 

To hear the fire roar and hiss 

Through the domes of those mighty palaces. 

The eddy whirled her round and round 
Before a gorgeous gate, which stood 

Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound 
Its aery arch with light like blood ; 

She looked on that gate of marble clear 

With wonder that extinguished fear : 

For it was filled with sculptures rarest, 
Of forms most beautiful and strange, 

Like nothing human, but the fairest 
Of winged shapes, whose legions range 

Throughout the sleep of those who are, 

Like this same Lady, good and fair. 



And as she looked, still lovelier grew 
Those marble forms ; — the sculptor sure 

Was a strong spirit, and the hue 
Of his own mind did there endure 

After the touch, whose power had braided 

Such grace, was in some sad change faded. 

She looked, the flames were dim, the flood 
Grew tranquil as a woodland river 

Winding through hills in solitude ; 

Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver, 

And their fair limbs to float in motion, 

Like weeds unfolding in the ocean. 



And their lips moved ; one seemed to apeak, 

When suddenly the mountain crackt, 
And through the chasm the floor did break 

With an earth-uplifting cataract: 
The statues gave a joyous scream, 
And on its wings the pale thin dream 
Lifted the Lady from the stream. 

The dizzy flight of that phantom pale 
Waked the fair Lady from her sleep, 

xVnd she arose, while from the veil 

Of her dark eyes the dream did creep ; 

And she walked about as one who knew 

That sleep has sights as clear and true 

As any waking eyes can view. 



TO CONSTANTIA 

SINGING. 

Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die, 

Perchance were death indeed ! — Constantia,turn ! 

In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie, 
Even though the sounds which were thy voice, 
which burn 

Between thy lips, are laid to sleep ; 

Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour it 

And from thy touch like fire doth leap. [is yet, 
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet, 
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget ! 

A breathless awe, like the swift change 
Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers, 

Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange, 

Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers. 

The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven 
By the enchantment of thy strain, 

And on my shoulders wings are woven, 
To follow its sublime career, 

Beyond the mighty moons that wane 

Upon the verge of nature's utmost sphere, 
Till the world's shadowy walls are past and 
disappear. 

Her voice is hovering o'er my soul — it lingers 
O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings, 

The blood and life within those snowy fingers 
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. 

My brain is wild, my breath comes quick — 
The blood is listening in my frame, 

And thronging shadows, fast and thick, 
Fall on my overflowing eyes ; 

My heart is quivering like a flame ; 

As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies, 
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstacies. 

I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee, 

Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song 

Flows on, and fills all things with melody. — 
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, 

On which, like one in trance upborne, 
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep, 

Rejoicing like a cloud of morn. 

Now 'tis the breath of summer night, 

Which, when the starry waters sleep, 
Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright, 
Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous 
flight. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



203 



TO CONSTANTIA. 



The rose that drinks the fountain dew 

In the pleasant air of noon, 
Grows pale and blue with altered hue — 

In the gaze of the nightly moon ; 
For the planet of frost, so cold and bright, 
Makes it wan with her borrowed light. 

Such is ray heart — roses are fair, 
And that at best a withered blossom ; 

But thy false care did idly wear 

Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom ! 

And fed with love, like air and dew, 

Its growth 



DEATH. 



They die — the dead return not — Misery 

Sits near an open grave and calls them over, 
A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye — 

They are names of kindred, friend and lover, 
Which he so feebly calls — they all are gone ! 
Fond wretch, all dead, those vacant names alone, 
This most familiar scene, my pain — 
These tombs alone remain. 

Misery, my sweetest friend — oh ! weep no more ! 

Thou wilt not be consoled — I wonder not ! 
For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door 

Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot 
Was even as bright and calm, but transitory, 
And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary ; 
This most familiar scene, my pain — 
These tombs alone remain. 



SONNET.— OZYMANDIAS. 



I met a traveller from an antique land 
Who said : Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed ; 
And on the pedestal these words appear : 
" My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair !" 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, 
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 



ON F. G. 

Her voice did quiver as we parted, 

Yet knew I not that heart was broken 
From which it came, and I departed 
Heeding not the words then spoken. 
Misery — O Misery, 
This world is all too wide for thee. 



LINES TO A CRITIC. 



Honey from silkworms who can gather, 
Or silk from the yellow bee ? 

The grass may grow in winter weather 
As soon as hate in me. 

Hate men who cant, and men who pray, 
And men who rail like thee ; 

An equal passion to repay 
They are not coy like me. 

Or seek some slave of power and gold, 
To be thy dear heart's mate ; 

Thy love will move that bigot cold, 
Sooner than me thy hate. 

A passion like the one I prove 

Cannot divided be ; 
I hate thy want of truth and love — 

How should I then hate thee \ 

December, 1817- 



LINES. 



That time is dead for ever, child, 
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever ! 

We look on the past, 

And stare aghast 
At the spectres wailing, pale, and ghast, 
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled 

To death on life's dark river. 

The stream we gazed on then rolled by ; 
Its waves are unreturning j 

But we yet stand 

In a lone land, 
Like tombs to mark the memory 
Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee 

In the light of life's dim morning. 

November 5th, 1817. 



'204 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON TOEMS OF 1817. 



NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817. 



BY THE EDITOR. 



The very illness that oppressed, and the aspect 
of death which had approached so near Shelley, 
appears to have kindled to yet keener life the 
Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts 
kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. 
Much was composed during this year. The 
" Revolt of Islam," written and printed, was a 
great effort — " Rosalind and Helen" was begun — 
and the fragments and poems I can trace to the 
same period, show how full of passion and reflec- 
tion were his solitary hours. 

In addition to such poems as have an intelligible 
aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory 
emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, 
and then again lost themselves in silence. As he 
never wandered without a book, and without im- 
plements of writing, I find many such in his 
manuscript books, that scarcely bear record ; 
while some of them, broken and vague as they are, 
will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's 
mind, and desire to trace its workings. Thus in 
the same book that addresses " Constantia, Singing," 
I find these lines : — 

My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim 
Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing, 

Far away into the regions dim 

Of rapture — as a boat with swift sails winging 
Its way adown some many-winding river. 

And this apostrophe to Music : 

No, Music, thou art not the God of Love, 
Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self, 
Till it becomes all music murmurs of. 

In another fragment he calls it — 

The silver key of the fountain of tears, 

Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild ; 

Softest grave of a thousand fears, 

Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child, 
Is laid asleep in flowers. 



And then again this melancholy trace of the sad 
thronging thoughts, which were the well whence 
he drew the idea of Athanase, and express the 
restless, passion-fraught emotions of one whose 
sensibility, kindled to too intense a life, perpetually 
preyed upon itself : 

To thirst and find no fill — to wail and wander 
With short unsteady steps — to pause and ponder — 
To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle 
Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle; 
To nurse the image of unfelt caresses 
TiE dim imagination just possesses 
The half created shadow. 

In the next page I find a calmer sentiment, better 
fitted to sustain one whose whole being was love : 

Wealth and dominion fade into the mass 
Of the great sea of human right and wrong, 
When once from our possession they must pass ; 
But love, though misdirected, is among 
The things which are immortal, and surpass 
All that frail stuff which will be— or which was. 

In another book, which contains some passionate 
outbreaks with regard to the great injustice that 
he endured this year, the poet writes : 

My thoughts arise and fade in solitude, 
The verse that would invest them melts away 
Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day : 
How beautiful they were, how firm they stood, 
Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl ! 

He had this year also projected a poem on 
the subject of Otho, inspired by the pages of 
Tacitus. I find one or two stanzas only, which 
were to open the subject: — 



Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be, 
Last of the Romans, though thy memory claim 
From Brutus his own glory — and on thee 
Rests the full splendour of his sacred fame ; 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817. 



205 



Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail, 
Amid his cowering senate with thy name, 
Though thou and he were great — it will avail 
To thine own fame that Otho's should not fail. 

Twill wrong thee not— thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel, 

Abjure such envious fame — great Otho died 

Like thee— he sanctified his country's steel, 

At once the tyrant and tyrannicide, 

In his own blood— a deed it was to buy 

Tears from all men — though full of gentle pride, 

Such pride as from impetuous love may spring, 

That will not be refused its offering. 

I insert here also the fragment of a song, though 
I do not know the date when it was written,— but 
it was early : — 

TO . 

Yet look on me — take not thine eyes away, 
Which feed upon the love within mine own, 

Which is indeed but the reflected ray 

Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown. 

Yet speak to me— thy voice is as the tone 
Of my heart's echo, and I think I hear 

That thou yet lovest me ; yet thou alone 
Like one before a mirror, without care 

Of aught but thine own features, imaged there ; 

And yet I wear out life in watching thee ; 
A toil so sweet at times, and thou indeed 

Art kind when I am sick, and pity me. 

He projected also translating the Hymns of 
Homer ; his version of several of the shorter ones 
remain, as well as that to Mercury, already 
published in the Posthumous Poems. His readings 
this year were chiefly Greek. Besides the Hymns 
of Homer and the Iliad, he read the Dramas of 
./Esehylus and Sophocles, the Symposium of Plato, 
and Arrian's Historia Indica. In Latin, Apuleius 
alone is named. In English, the Bible was his 



constant study ; he read a great portion of it aloud 
in the evening. Among these evening readings, 
I find also mentioned the Fairy Queen, and other 
modern works, the production of his contem- 
poraries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, and 
Byron. 

His life was now spent more in thought than 
action — he had lost the eager spirit which believed 
it could achieve what it projected for the benefit 
of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily 
life Shelley was far from being a melancholy 
man. He was eloquent when philosophy, or 
politics, or taste, were the subjects of conver- 
sation. He was playful — and indulged in the wild 
spirit that mocked itself and others — not in bitter- 
ness, but in sport. The Author of " Nightmare 
Abbey" seized on some points of his character and 
some habits of his life when he painted Scythrop. 
He was not addicted to " port or madeira," but 
in youth he had read of " Illuminati and Eleu- 
therachs," and believed that he possessed the 
power of operating an immediate change in the 
minds of men and the state of society. These 
wild dreams had faded ; sorrow and adversity had 
struck home ; but he struggled with despondency 
as he did with physical pain. There are few who 
remember him sailing paper boats, and watching 
the navigation of his tiny craft with eagerness — 
or repeating with wild energy the " Ancient 
Mariner," and Southey's " Old Woman of 
Berkeley," — but those who do, will recollect that 
it was in such, and in the creations of his own 
fancy, when that was most daring and ideal, that 
he sheltered himself from the storms and disap- 
pointments, the pain and sorrow, that beset his life. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVIII. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



ADVERTISEMENT 

TO 

ROSALIND AND HELEN, AND LINES WRITTEN AMONG 
THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 



The story of Rosalind and Helen is, undoubtedly, 
not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in 
no degree calculated to excite profound meditation ; 
and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the 
imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy 
favourable to the reception of more important impres- 
sions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer 
experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, 
as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded 
the conception of the story ; and this impulse deter- 
mined the pauses of a measure, wdiich only pretends 
to be regular, inasmuch as it corresponds with, and 
expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which 
inspired it. 



I do not know which of the few scattered poems I 
left in England will be selected by my bookseller to 
add to this collection. One, which I sent from Italy, was 
written after a day's excursion among those lovely moun- 
tains which surround what was once the retreat, and where 
is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined 
to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which 
image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep des- 
pondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden 
burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn, on the highest 
peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as 
my excuse, that they were not erased at the request 
of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse 
only add to my apprehension of its value, and who 
would have had more right than any one to complain, 
that she has not been able to extinguish in me the 
very power of delineating sadness. 

Naples, Dec. 20, 18] 8. 



SCENE.— The Shore of the Lake ofComo. 

Rosalind, Helen, andher Child. 

HELEN. 
Come hither, my sweet Rosalind. 
'Tis long since thou and I have met : 
And yet methinks it were unkind 
Those moments to forget. 
Come, sit by me. I see thee stand 
By this lone lake, in this far land, 
Thy loose hair in the light wind flying, 
Thy sweet voice to each tone of even 
United, and thine eyes replying 
To the hues of yon fair heaven. 
Come, gentle friend ! wilt sit by me ? 
And be as thou wert wont to be 
Ere we were disunited ? 
None doth behold us now : the power 
That led us forth at this lone hour 
Will be but ill requited 
If thou depart in scorn : oh ! come, 
And talk of our abandoned home. 
Remember, this is Italy, 
And we are exiles. Talk with me 
Of that our land, whose wilds and floods, 
Barren and dark although they be, 
Were dearer than these chesnut woods ; 



Those heathy paths, that inland stream, 
And the blue mountains, shapes which seem 
Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream : 
Which that we have abandoned now, 
Weighs on the heart like that remorse 
Which altered friendship leaves. I seek 
No more our youthful intercourse. 
That cannot be ! Rosalind, speak, [come, 

Speak to me. Leave me not. — When morn did 
When evening fell upon our common home, 
When for one hour we parted, — do not frown ; 
I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken , 
But turn to me. Oh ! by this cherished token 
Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown, 
Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me, 
And not my scorned self who prayed to thee. 

ROSALIND. 

Is it a dream, or do I see 

And hear frail Helen ? I would flee 

Thy tainting touch ; but former years 

Arise, and bring forbidden tears ; 

And my o'erburthened memory 

Seeks yet its lost repose in thee. 

I share thy crime. I cannot choose 

But weep for thee : mine own strange grief 

But seldom stoops to such relief ; 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



207 



Nor ever did I love thee less, 
Though mourning o'er thy wickedness 
Even with a sister's woe. I knew 
What to the evil world is due, 
And therefore sternly did refuse 
To link me with the infamy 
Of one so lost as Helen. Now 
Bewildered by my dire despair, 
Wondering I blush,and weep that thou 
Shouldst love me still, — thou only ! — There, 
Let us sit on that grey stone, 
Till our mournful talk be done. 

HELEN. 

Alas ! not there ; I cannot bear 

The murmur of this lake to hear. 

A sound from thee, Rosalind dear, 

Which never yet I heard elsewhere 

But in our native land, recurs, 

Even here where now we meet. It stirs 

Too much of suffocating sorrow ! 

In the dell of yon dark chesnut wood 

Is a stone seat, a solitude 

Less like our own. The ghost of peace 

Will not desert this spot. To-morrow, 

If thy kind feelings should not cease, 

We may sit here. 



And I will follow. 



ROSALIND. 

Thou lead, my sweet, 



HENRY. 

'Tis Fenici's seat 
Where you are going ? This is not the way, 
Mama ; it leads behind those trees that grow 
Close to the little river. 

HELEN. 

Yes ; I know ; 
I was bewildered. Kiss me, and be gay, 
Dear boy, why do you sob ? 

HENRY. 

I do not know : 
But it might break any one's heart to see 
You and the lady cry so bitterly. 

HELEN. 

It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home, 
Henry, and play with Lilla till I come. 
We only cried with joy to see each other ; 
We are quite merry now — Good night. 

The boy 
Lifted a sudden look upon his mother, 
And in the gleam of forced and hollow joy 
Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee 
Of light and unsuspecting infancy, 
And whispered in her ear, " Bring home with you 
That sweet, strange lady-friend." Then off he 

flew, 
But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile, 
Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while, 
Hiding her face, stood weeping silently. 

In silence then they took the way 
Beneath the forest's solitude. 
It was a vast and antique wood, 
Through which they took their way ; 



And the grey shades of evening 

O'er that green wilderness did fling 

Still deeper solitude. 

Pursuing still the path that wound 

The vast and knotted trees around, 

Through which slow shades were wandering, 

To a deep lawny dell they came, 

To a stone seat beside a spring, 

O'er which the columned wood did frame 

A roofless temple, like the fane 

Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain, 

Man's early race once knelt beneath 

The overhanging deity. 

O'er this fair fountain hung the sky, 

Now spangled with rare stars. The snake, 

The pale snake, that with eager breath 

Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake, 

Is beaming with many a mingled hue, 

Shed from yon dome's eternal blue, 

When he floats on that dark and lucid flood 

In the light of his own loveliness ; 

And the birds that in the fountain dip 

Their plumes, with fearless fellowship 

Above and round him wheel and hover. 

The fitful wind is heard to stir 

One solitary leaf on high ; 

The chirping of the grasshopper 

Fills every pause. There is emotion 

In all that dwells at noontide here : 

Then, through the intricate wild wood, 

A maze of life and light and motion 

Is woven. But there is stillness now ; 

Gloom, and the trance of Nature now : 

The snake is in his cave asleep ; 

The birds are on the branches dreaming ; 

Only the shadows creep ; 

Only the glow-worm is gleaming ; 

Only the owls and the nightingales 

Wake in this dell when day-light fails, 

And grey shades gather in the woods ; 

And the owls have all fled far away 

In a merrier glen to hoot and play, 

For the moon is veiled and sleeping now. 

The accustomed nightingale still broods 

On her accustomed bough, 

But she is mute ; for her false mate 

Has fled and left her desolate. 

This silent spot tradition old 

Had peopled with the spectral dead. 

For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold 

And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told 

That a hellish shape at midnight led 

The ghost of a youth with hoary hair, 

And sate on the seat beside him there, 

Till a naked child came wandering by, 

When the fiend would change to a lady fair ! 

A fearful tale ! The truth was worse : 

For here a sister and a brother 

Had solemnised a monstrous curse, 

Meeting in this fair solitude : 

For beneath yon very sky, 

Had they resigned to one another 

Body and soul. The multitude, 

Tracking them to the secret wood, 

Tore limb from limb their innocent child, 

And stabbed and trampled on its mother ; 

But the youth, for God's most holy grace, 

A priest saved to burn in the market-place. 



MM) 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



Data at evening Helen mm 

To this kHM silent spot, 

From the wroeka of ■ tele of wilder Borrow 
So much of sympathy to borrow 

mod her own dark lot 
Daly eeeh evening from her homo, 
With her fair emu would Helen come 
To sit upon thai Antique Beat, 
While the huea of day were pale ; 
Ami the bright boy beeide her feet 

Now lay, lifting at intervals 
His broad blue eyos on hor ; 
Now. where some sadden impulse calls 
Following. He was a gentle boy 
And in all gentle sports took joy ; 
Oft in a dry loaf for a boat, 
With a small feather for a Bail, 
His fancy on that spring would float, 
If some invisible breeze might stir 
Its marble calm : and Helen smiled 
Through tears of awe on the gay child, 
To think that a boy as fair as he, 
In years which never more may be, 
By that same fount, in that same wood, 
The like sweet fancies had pursued ; 
And that a mother, lost like her, 
Had mournfully sate watching him. 
Then all the scene was wont to swim 
Through the mist of a burning tear. 

For many months had Helen known 

This scene ; and now she thither turned 

Her footsteps, not alone. 

The friend whose falsehood she had mourned, 

Sate with her on that seat of stone. 

Silent they sate ; for evening, 

And the power its glimpses bring 

Had, with one awful shadow, quelled 

The passion of their grief. They sate 

With linked hands, for unrepelled 

Had Helen taken Rosalind's. 

Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds 

The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair, 

Which is twined in the sultry summer air 

Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre, 

Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet, 

And the sound of her heart that ever beat, 

As with sighs and words she breathed on her, 

Unbind the knots of her friend's despair, 

Till her thoughts were free to float and flow ; 

And from her labouring bosom now, 

Like the bursting of a prisoned flame, 

The voice of a long-pent sorrow came. 

ROSALIND. 

I saw the dark earth fall upon 

The coffin ; and I saw the stone 

Laid over him whom this cold breast 

Had pillowed to his nightly rest ! 

Thou knowest not, thou canst not know 

My agony. Oh ! I could not weep : 

The sources whence such blessings flow 

Were not to be approached by me ! 

But I could smile, and I could sleep, 

Though with a self-accusing heart. 

In morning's light, in evening's gloom, 

I watched, — and would not thence depart, — 

My husband's unlamented tomb. 

My children knew their sire was gone 

But when I told them, " he is dead," 



They laughed aloud in frantic glee, 

They clapped their hands and leaped about, 

Answering eaeh other's ecstacy 

With many a prank and merry shout, 

Hut 1 sat silent and alone, 

Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed. 

They laughed, for he was dead ; but I 
Sato with a hard and tearless eye, 
And with a heart which would deny 
The secret joy it could not quell, 
Low muttering o'er his loathed name ; 
Till from that self-contention came 
Remorse where sin was none ; a hell 
Which in pure spirits should not dwell. 

I'll tell the truth. He was a man 

Hard, selfish, loving only gold, 

Yet full of guile : his pale eyes ran 

With tears, which each some falsehood told, 

And oft his smooth and bridled tongue 

Would give the lie to his flushing cheek : 

He was a coward to the strong ; 

He was a tyrant to the weak, 

On whom his vengeance he would wreak : 

For scorn, whose arrows search the heart. 

From many a stranger's eye would dart, 

And on his memory cling, and follow 

His soul to its home so cold and hollow. 

He was a tyrant to the weak, 

And we were such, alas the day ! 

Oft, when my little ones at play, 

Were in youth's natural lightness gay, 

Or if they listened to some tale 

Of travellers, or of fairy land, — 

When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand 

Flashed on their faces, — if they heard 

Or thought they heard upon the stair 

His footstep, the suspended word 

Died on my lips : we all grew pale ; 

The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear 

If it thought it heard its father near ; 

And my two wild boys would near my knee 

Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully. 

I'll tell the truth : I loved another. 

His name in my ear was ever ringing, 

His form to my brain was ever clinging ; 

Yet if some stranger breathed that name, 

My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast : 

My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame, 

My days were dim in the shadow cast, 

By the memory of the same ! 

Day and night, day and night, 

He was my breath and life and light, 

For three short years, which soon were past. 

On the fourth, my gentle mother 

Led me to the shrine, to be 

His sworn bride eternally. 

And now we stood on the altar stair, 

When my father came from a distant land, 

And with a loud and fearful cry, 

Rushed between us suddenly. 

I saw the stream of his thin grey hair, 

I saw his lean and lifted hand, 

And heard his words, — and live ! O God i 

Wherefore do I live ?— " Hold, hold !" 

He cried, — " I tell thee 'tis her brother ! 

Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



209 



Of yon church-yard rests in her shroud so cold. 

I am now weak, and pale, and old : 

We were once dear to one another, 

I and that corpse ! Thou art our child !" 

Then with a laugh both long and wild 

The youth upon the pavement fell : 

They found him dead ! All looked on me, 

The spasms of my despair to see ; 

But I was calm. I went away ; 

I was clammy-cold like clay ! 

I did not weep — I did not speak ; 

But day by day, week after week, 

I walked about like a corpse alive ! 

Alas ! sweet friend, you must believe 

This heart is stone — it did not break. 

My father lived a little while, 

But all might see that he was dying, 

He smiled with such a woeful smile ! 

When he was in the church-yard lying 

Among the worms, we grew quite poor, 

So that no one would give us bread ; 

My mother looked at me, and said 

Faint words of cheer, which only meant 

That she could die and be content ; 

So I went forth from the same church door 

To another husband's bed. 

And this was he who died at last, 

When weeks and months and years had past, 

Through which I firmly did fulfil 

My duties, a devoted wife, 

With the stern step of vanquished will, 

Walking beneath the night of life, 

Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain 

Falling for ever, pain by pain, 

The very hope of death's dear rest ; 

Which, since the heart within my breast 

Of natural life was dispossest, 

Its strange sustainer there had been. 

When flowers were dead, and grass was green 

Upon my mother's grave, — that mother 

Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make 

My wan eyes glitter for her sake, 

Was my vowed task, the single care 

Which once gave life to my despair, — 

When she was a thing that did not stir, 

And the crawling worms were cradling her 

To a sleep more deep and so more sweet 

Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee, 

I lived ; a living pulse then beat 

Beneath my heart that awakened me. 

What was this pulse so warm and free ? 

Alas ! I knew it could not be 

My own dull blood : 'twas like a thought 

Of liquid love, that spread and wrought 

Under my bosom and in my brain, 

And crept with the blood through every vein ; 

And hour by hour, day after day, 

The wonder could not charm away r 

But laid in sleep my wakeful pain, 

Until I knew it was a child, 

And then I wept. For long, long years 

These frozen eyes had shed no tears : 

But now — 'twas the season fair and mild 

When April has wept itself to May : 

I sate through the sweet sunny day 

By my window bowered round with leaves, 

And down my cheeks the quick tears ran 



Like twinkling rain-drops from the » . 

When warm spring showers are passing o'er : 

Helen, none can ever tell 

The joy it was to weep once more ! 

1 wept to think how hard it were 
To kill my babe, and take from it 
The sense of light, and the warm air, 
And my own fond and tender care, 
And love and smiles ; ere I knew yet 
That these for it might, as for me, 
Be the masks of a grinning mockery. 
And haply, I would dream, 'twere sweet 
To feed it from my faded breast, 

Or mark my own heart's restless beat 

Rock it to its untroubled rest ; 

And watch the growing soul beneath 

Dawn in faint smiles ; and hear its breath, 

Half interrupted by calm sighs ; 

And search the depth of its fair eyes 

For long departed memories ! 

And so I lived till that sweet load 

Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed 

The stream of years, and on it bore 

Two shapes of gladness to my sight ; 

Two other babes, delightful more 

In my lost soul's abandoned night, 

Than their own country ships may be 

Sailing towards wrecked mariners, 

Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea. 

For each, as it came, brought soothing tears, 

And a loosening warmth, as each one lay 

Sucking the sullen milk away, 

About my frozen heart did play, 

And weaned it, oh how painfully ! — 

As they themselves were weaned each one 

From that sweet food, — even from the thirst 

Of death, and nothingness, and rest, 

Strange inmate of a living breast ! 

Which all that I had undergone 

Of grief and shame, since she, who first 

The gates of that dark refuge closed, 

Came to my sight, and almost burst 

The seal of that Lethean sprung ; 

But these fair shadows interposed : 

For all delights are shadows now ! 

And from my brain to my dull brow 

The heavy tears gather and flow : 

£ cannot speak — Oh let me weep ! 

The tears which fell from her wan eyes 
Glimmered among the moonlight dew ! 
Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs 
Their echoes in the darkness threw. 
When she grew calm, she thus did keep 
The tenor of her tale : — 

He died, 
I know not how. He was not old, 
If age be numbered by its years ; 
But he was bowed and bent with fears, 
Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold, 
Which, like fierce fever, left him weak ; 
And his strait lip and bloated cheek 
Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers ; 
And selfish cares with barren plough, 
Not age, had lined his narrow brow, 
And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed 
Upon the withering life within, 



10 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



• ripen on some poisonous weed. 
Whether his ill were death or sin 
None know, until ho died indeed, 
And then men owned they were the nine. 

ren days within my chamber ley 
That ooree, and my babes made holiday : 
\- last, I told them what is death : 
The eldest, with a kind o\' shame. 

Came to my knees with silent breath, 

And sate awe-stricken at my feet ; 
And soon the others left their play, 
And sate there too. It is unmeet 
To shed on the brief flower of youth 
The withering knowledge of the grave : 
From me remorse then wrung that truth. 
1 oould not bear the joy which gave 
Too just a response to mine own. 
In vain. I dared not feign a groan ; 
And in their artless looks I saw, 
Between the mists, of fear and awe, 
That my own thought was theirs ; and they 
Expressed it not in words, but said, 
Each in its heart, how every day 
Will pass in happy work and play, 
Now he is dead and gone away ! 

After the funeral all our kin 

Assembled, and the will was read. 

My friend, I tell thee, even the dead 

Have strength, their putrid shrouds within, 

To blast and torture. Those who live 

Still fear the living, but a corse 

la merciless, aud power doth give 

To such pale tyrants half the spoil 

He rends from those who groan and toil, 

Because they blush not with remorse 

Among their crawling worms. Behold, 

I have no child ! my tale grows old 

With grief, and staggers : let it reach 

The limits of my feeble speech, 

And languidly at length recline 

On the brink of its own grave and mine. 

Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty 

Among the fallen on evil days : 

'Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy, 

And houseless Want in frozen ways 

Wandering ungarmented, and Pain, 

And, worse than ail, that inward stain, 

Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers 

Youth's star-light smile, and makes its tears 

First like hot gall, then dry for ever ! 

And well thou knowest a mother never 

Could doom her children to this ill, 

And well he knew the same. The will 

Imported, that if e'er again 

I sought my children to behold, 

Or in my birth-place did remain 

Beyond three days, whose hours were told, 

They should inherit nought : and he, 

To whom next came their patrimony, 

A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold, 

Aye watched me, as the will was read, 

With eyes askance, which sought to see 

The secrets of my agony ; 

And with close iips and anxious brow 

Stood canvassing still to and fro 

The chance of my resolve, and all 

The dead man's caution just did call ; 



For in that killing lie 'twas said — 

"She is adulterous, and doth hold 

In secret that the Christian creed 
Is false, and therefore is much need 

That I should have a care to save 
Mv children from eternal fire." 
Friend, he was sheltered by the grave, 
And therefore dared to be a liar ! 
In truth, the Indian on the pyre 
Of her dead husband, half-consumed, 
As well might there be false, as I 
To those abhorred embraces doomed, 
Far worse than lire's brief agony. 
As to the Christian creed, if true 
Or false, I never questioned it : 
1 took it as the vulgar do : 
Nor my vext soul had leisure yet ■ 
To doubt the things men say, or deem 
That they are other than they seem. 

All present who those crimes did hear, 

In feigned or actual scorn and fear, 

Men, women, children, slunk away, 

Whispering with self-contented pride, 

Which half suspects its own base lie. 

I spoke to none, nor did abide, 

But silently I went my way. 

Nor noticed I where joyously 

Sate my two younger babes at play, 

In the court-yard through which I past ; 

But went with footsteps firm and fast 

Till I came to the brink of the ocean green, 

And there, a woman with grey hairs, 

Who had my mother's servant been, 

Kneeling, with many tears and prayers, 

Made me accept a purse of gold, 

Half of the earnings she had kept 

To refuge her when weak and old. 

With woe, which never sleeps or slept, 

I wander now. 'Tis a vain thought— 

But on yon alp, whose snowy head 

'Mid the azure air is islanded 

(We see it o'er the flood of cloud, 

Which sunrise from its eastern caves 

Drives, wrinkling into golden waves, 

Hung with its precipices proud, 

From that grey stone where first we met), 

There, now who knows the dead feel nought ? 

Should be my grave ; for he who yet 

Is my soul's soul, once said : " 'Twere sweet 

'Mid stars and lightnings to abide, 

And winds and lulling snows, that beat 

With their soft flakes the mountain wide, 

When weary meteor lamps repose, 

And languid storms their pinions close : 

And all things strong and bright and pure, 

And ever-during, aye endure : 

Who knows, if one were buried there, 

But these things might our spirits make, 

Amid the all-surrounding air, 

Their own eternity partake ? " 

Then 'twas a wild and playful saying 

At which 1 laughed or seemed to laugh : 

They were his words : now heed my praying, 

And let them be my epitaph. 

Thy memory for a term may be 

My monument. Wilt remember me ? 

I know thou wilt, and canst forgive 

Whilst in this erring world to live 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



211 



My soul disdained not, that I thought 
Its lying forms were worthy aught, 
And much less thee. 



speak not so, 
But come to me and pour thy woe 
Into this heart, full though it be, 
Aye overflowing with its own : 
I thought that grief had severed me 
From all beside who weep and groan ; 
Its likeness upon earth to be, 
Its express image ; but thou art 
More wretched. Sweet ! we will not part 
Henceforth, if death be not division ; 
If so, the dead feel no contrition. 
But wilt thou hear, since last we parted 
All that has left me broken-hearted 1 

ROSALIND. 

Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn 
Of their thin beams, by that delusive morn 
Which sinks again in darkness, like the light 
Of early love, soon lost in total night. 

HELEN. 

Alas ! Italian winds are mild, 

But my bosom is cold — wintry cold — 

When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves 

Soft music, my poor brain is wild, 

And I am weak like a nursling child, 

Though my soul with grief is grey and old. 

BOSALIND. 

Weep not at thine own words, tho' they must make 
Me weep. What is thy tale ? 

HELEN. 

I fear 'twill shake 
Thy gentle heart with tears. Thou well 
Rememberest when we met no more, 
And, though I dwelt with Lionel, 
That friendless caution pierced me sore 
With grief — a wound my spirit bore 
Indignantly ; but when he died, 
With him lay dead both hope and pride. 

Alas ! all hope is buried now. 

But then men dreamed the aged earth 

Was labouring in that mighty birth, 

Which many a poet and a sage 

Has aye foreseen — the happy age 

When truth and love shall dwell below 

Among the works and ways of men ; 

Which on this world not power but will 

Even now is wanting to fulfil. 

Among mankind what thence befel 

Of strife, how vain, is known too well ; 

When Liberty's dear psean fell 

'Mid murderous howls. To Lionel, 

Though of great wealth and lineage high, 

Yet through those dungeon walls there came 

Thy thrilling light, Liberty ! 

And as the meteor's midnight flame 

Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth 

Flashed on his visionary youth, 

And filled him, not with love, but faith, 

And hope, and courage mute in death ; 

For love and life in him were twins, 



Born at one birth : in every other 

First life, then love its course begins, 

Though they be children of one mother ; 

And so through this dark world they fleet 

Divided, till in death they meet : 

But he loved all things ever. Then 

He passed amid the strife of men, 

And stood at the throne of armed power 

Pleading for a world of woe : 

Secure as one on a rock-built tower 

O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, 

'Mid the passions wild of human kind 

He stood, like a spirit calming them ; 

For, it was said, his words could bind 

Like music the lulled crowd, and stem 

That torrent of unquiet dream 

Which mortals truth and reason deem, 

But is revenge and fear, and pride. 

Joyous he was ; and hope and peace 

On all who heard him did abide, 

Raining like dew from his sweet talk, 

As where the evening star may walk 

Along the brink of the gloomy seas, 

Liquid mists of splendour quiver. 

His very gestures touched to tears 

The unpersuaded tyrant, never 

So moved before : his presence stung 

The torturers with their victims' pain, 

And none knew how ; and through their ears, 

The subtle witchcraft of his tongue 

Unlocked the hearts of those who keep 

Gold, the world's bond of slavery. 

Men wondered and some sneered to see 

One sow what he could never reap : 

For he is rich, they said, and young, 

And might drink from the depths of luxury. 

If he seeks fame, fame never crowned 

The champion of a trampled creed : 

If he seeks power, power is enthroned 

'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed 

Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, 

Those who would sit near power must toil ; 

And such, there sitting, all may see. 

What seeks he ? All that others seek 

He casts away, like a vile weed 

Which the sea casts unreturningly. 

That poor and hungry men should break 

The laws which wreak them toil and scorn. 

We understand ; but Lionel 

We know is rich and nobly born. 

So wondered they ; yet all men loved 

Young Lionel, though few approved ; 

All but the priests, whose hatred fell 

Like the unseen blight of a smiling day, 

The withering honey-dew, which clings 

Under the bright green buds of May, 

Whilst they unfold their emerald wings : 

For he made verses wild and queer 

On the strange creeds priests hold so dear, 

Because they bring them land and gold. 

Of devils and saints and all such gear, 

He made tales which whoso heard or read 

Would laugh till he were almost dead. 

So this grew a proverb : " Don't get eld 

Till Lionel's ' banquet in hell' you hear, 

And then you will laugh yourself young again." 

So the priests hated him, and he 

Repaid their hate with cheerful glee. 



819 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



All ! smiles and joyanoe quickly diet!, 
Tor pablk hope grew pale and dim 
In an altered time and tide, 
And in its wanting withered him, 

immer Rower thai blows too soon 
Droops in the smile of the waning moon, 
When it scatters through an April night 
The t'iv.-vn dews of wrinkling blight. 
None now hoped more. Grey Power was Boated 
Safely on her ancestral throne ; 
Ami Faith, the Python, undefeated, 
Even to its blood-stained stops dragged on 
H Of foul ami wounded train ; and men 
Were trampled and deceived again, 
And words and shows again could bind 
The wailing tribes of humankind 
1 a BCorn and famine. Fire and blood 
KaLre.l round the raging multitude, 
To fields remote by tyrants sent 
To be the scorned instrument, 
With which they drag from mines of gore 
The chains their slaves yet ever wore ; 
And in the streets men met each other, 
And by old altars and in halls, 
And smiled again at festivals. 
But each man found in his heart's brother 
Cold cheer ; for all, though half deceived, 
The outworn creeds again believed, 
And the same round anew began, 
Which the weary world yet ever ran. 

Many then wept, not tears, but gall, 

Within their hearts, like drops which fall 

Wasting the fountain-stone away. 

And in that dark and evil day 

Did all desires and thoughts, that claim 

Men's care — ambition, friendship, fame, 

Love, hope, though hope was now despair — 

Indue the colours of this change, 

As from the all-surrounding air 

The earth takes hues obscure and strange, 

When storm and earthquake linger there. 

And so, my friend, it then befel 
To many, most to Lionel, 
Whose hope was like the life of youth 
Within him, and when dead, became 
A spirit of unresting flame, 
Which goaded him in his distress 
Over the world's vast wilderness. 
Three years he left his native land, 
And on the fourth, when he returned, 
None knew him : he was stricken deep 
With some disease of mind, and turned 
Into aught unlike Lionel. 
On him — on whom, did he pause in sleep, 
Serenest smiles were wont to keep, 
And, did he wake, a winged band 
Of bright persuasions, which had fed 
On his sweet lips and liquid eyes, 
Kept their swift pinions half outspread, 
To do on men his least command — 
On him, whom once 'twas paradise 
Even to behold, now misery lay : 
In his own heart 'twas merciless, 
To all things else none may express 
Its innocence and tenderness. 

'Twas said that he had refuge sought 
In love from his unquiet thought 



In distant lands, and been deceived 

By some strange show ; for there were found, 

Blotted with teal's, as those relieved 

By their own words are wont to do, 

These mournful verses on the ground, 

By all who read them blotted too. 

" How am I changed ! my hopes were once like fire : 
I loved, and I believed that life was love. 
How am I lost ! on wings of swift desire 
Among Heaven's winds my spirit once did move. 
I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire 
My liquid sleep. I woke, and did approve 
All nature to my heart, and thought to make 
A paradise of earth for one sweet sake. 
I love, but I believe in love no more : 
I feel desire, but hope not. 0, from sleep 
Most vainly must my weary brain implore 
Its long-lost flattery now. I wake to weep, 
And sit through the long day gnawing the core 
Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep, 
Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure, 
To my own soul its self-consuming treasure." 

He dwelt beside me near the sea ; 

And oft in evening did we meet, 

When the waves, beneath the star-light, flee 

O'er the yellow sands with silver feet, 

And talked. Our talk was sad and sweet, 

Till slowly from his mien there passed 

The desolation which it spoke ; 

And smiles, — as when the lightning's blast 

Has parched some heaven-delighting oak, 

The next spring shows leaves pale and rare, 

But like flowers delicate and fair, 

On its rent boughs — again arrayed 

His countenance in tender light : 

His words grew subtle fire, which made 

The air his hearers breathed delight : 

His motions, like the winds, were free, 

Which bend the bright grass gracefully, 

Then fade away in circlets faint : 

And winged Hope, on which upborne 

His soul seemed hovering in his eyes, 

Like some bright spirit newly-born 

Floating amid the sunny sides, 

Sprang forth from his rent heart anew. 

Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien, 

Tempering their loveliness too keen, 

Past woe its shadow backward threw, 

Till like an exhalation, spread 

From flowers half drunk with evening dew, 

They did become infectious : sweet 

And subtle mists of sense and thought 

Which rapt us soon, when we might meet, 

Almost from our own looks, and aught 

The wide world holds. And so, his mind 

Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear : 

For ever now his health declined, 

Like some frail bark which cannot bear 

The impulse of an altered wind, 

Though prosperous ; and my heart grew full 

'Mid its new joy of a new care : 

For his cheek became, not pale, but fair, 

As rose-o'ershadowed lilies are ; 

And soon his deep and sunny hair, 

In this alone less beautiful, 

Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare. 

The blood in his translucent veins 

Beat, not like animal life, but love 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



213 



Seemed now its sullen springs to move, 

When life had failed, and all its pains ; 

And sudden sleep would seize him oft 

Like death, so calm, but that ■ tear, 

His pointed eye-lashes between, 

Would gather in the light serene 

Of smiles, whose lustre bright and soft 

Beneath lay undulating there. 

His breath was like inconstant flame, 

As eagerly it went and came ; 

And I hung o'er him in his sleep, 

Till, like an image in the lake 

Which rains disturb, my tears would break 

The shadow of that slumber deep ; 

Then he would bid me not to weep, 

And say, with flattery false, yet sweet, 

That death and he could never meet, 

If I would never part with him. 

And so we loved, and did unite 

All that in us was yet divided : 

For when he said, that many a rite, 

By men to bind but once provided, 

Could not be shared by him and me, 

Or they would kill him in their glee, 

f shuddered, and then laughing said, 

* We will have rites our faith to bind, 

But our church shall be the starry night, 

Our altar the grassy earth outspread, 

And our priest the muttering wind." 

'Twas sunset as I spoke : one star 

Had scarce burst forth, when from afar 

The ministers of* misrule sent, 

Seized upon Lionel, and bore 

His chained limbs to a dreary tower, 

In the midst of a city vast and wide. 

For he, they said, from his mind had bent 

Against their gods keen blasphemy, 

For which, though his soul must roasted be 

In hell's red lakes immortally, 

Yet even on earth must he abide 

The vengeance of their slaves — a trial, 

I think, men call it. What avail 

Are prayers and tears, which chase denial 

From the fierce savage, nursed in hate \ 

What the knit soul that pleading and pale 

Makes wan the quivering cheek, which late 

It painted with its own delight ? 

We were divided. As I could, 

I stilled the tingling of my blood, 

And followed him in their despite, 

As a widow follows, pale and wild, 

The murderers and corse of her only child ; 

And when we came to the prison door, 

And I prayed to share his dungeon floor 

With prayers which rarely have been spurned, 

And when men drove me forth and I 

Stared with blank frenzy on the sky, 

A farewell look of love he turned, 

Half-calming me ; then gazed awhile, 

As if through that black and massy pile, 

And through the crowd around him there, 

And through the dense and murky air, 

And the thronged streets, he did espy 

What poets knew and prophecy ; 

And said, with voice that made them shiver, 

And clung like music in my brain, 

And which the mute walls spoke again 

Prolonging it with deepened strain — 

" Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever, 



Or the priests of the bloody faith ; 
They stand on the brink of that mighty river, 
Whose waves they have tainted with death : 
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells, 
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells, 
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, 
Like wrecks, in the surge of eternity." 

I dwelt beside the prison gate, 

And the strange crowd that out and in 

Passed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate, 

Might have fretted me with its ceaseless din, 

But the fever of care was louder within. 

Soon, but too late, in penitence 

Or fear, his foes released him thence : 

I saw his thin and languid form, 

As leaning on the jailer's arm, 

Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while, 

To meet his mute and faded smile, 

And hear his words of kind farewell, 

He tottered forth from his damp cell. 

Many had never wept before, 

From whom fast tears then gushed and fell : 

Many will relent no more, 

Who sobbed like infants then ; aye, all 

Who thronged the prison's stony hall, 

The rulers or the slaves of law 

Felt with a new surprise and awe 

That they were human, till strong shame 

Made them again become the same. 

The prison blood-hounds, huge and grim, 

From human looks the infection caught, 

And fondly crouched and fawned on him ; 

And men have heard the prisoners say, 

Who in their rotting dungeons lay, 

That from that hour, throughout one day, 

The fierce despair and hate, which kept 

Their trampled bosoms, almost slept : 

When, like twin vultures, they hung feeding 

On each heart's wound, wide torn and bleeding, 

Because their jailer's rule, they thought, 

Grew merciful, like a parent's sway. 

I know not how, but we were free : 

And Lionel sate alone with me, 

As the carriage drove through the streets apace ; 

And we looked upon each other's face ; 

And the blood in our fingers intertwined 

Ran like the thoughts of a single mind, 

As the swift emotions went and came 

Through the veins of each united frame. 

So through the long long streets we past 

Of the million-peopled city vast ; 

Which is that desert, where each one 

Seeks his mate yet is alone, 

Beloved and sought and mourned of none ; 

Until the clear blue sky was seen, 

And the grassy meadows bright and green, 

And then I sunk in his embrace, 

Enclosing there a mighty space 

Of love : and so we travelled on 

By woods, and fields of yellow flowers, 

And towns, and villages, and towers, 

Day after day of happy hours. 

It was the azure time of June, 

When the skies are deep in the stainless noon, 

And the warm and fitful breezes shake 

The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row brier ; 

And there were odours then to make 

The very breath we did respire 

A liquid element, whereon 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



Our spirits like delighted thii 

Tli.it walk the air OB subtle wings. 

Floated ami mingled Ear awajj 

'Mid the «arm winds of the sunny day. 

Ami when the BTening star same forth 

the curre of the now bout moon, 
And Lighl and sound ebbed from the earth, 
Like the tide of the full and wear* sea 

To the depths of its own tranquillity, 
Our natures to its own repose 
Did the earth's hreathleiW sloop attune : 
Like Bowers, which on each other close 
Their languid leaves when day-light's gone, 

ay, till new emotions came, 
Which seemed to make each mortal framo 
One soul of interwoven flame, 
A life in life, a second birth, 
In worlds diviner far than earth, 
Which, like two strains of harmony 
That mingle in the silent sky, 
Then slowly disunite, pa- 
And left the tenderness of tears, 
A soft oblivion of all fears, 
A sweet sleep : so we travelled on 
Till we came to the home of Lionel, 
Among the mountains wild and lone, 
Beside the hoary western sea, 
Which near the verge of the echoing shore 
The massy forest shadowed o'er. 

The ancient steward, with hair all hoar, 

As we alighted, wept to see 

His master changed so fearfully ; 

And the old man's sobs did waken me 

From my dream of unremaining gladness ; 

The truth flashed o'er me like quick madness 

When I looked, and saw that there was death 

On Lionel : yet day by day 

He lived, till fear grew hope and faith, 

And in my soul I dared to say, 

Nothing so bright can pass away : 

Death is dark, and foul, and dull, 

But he is — how beautiful ! 

Yet day by day he grew more weak, 

And his sweet voice, when he might speak, 

Which ne'er was loud, became more low ; 

And the light which flashed through his waxen cheek 

Grew faint, as the rose-like hues which flow 

From sunset o'er the Alpine snow : 

And death seemed not like death in him, 

For the spirit of life o'er every limb 

Lingered, a mist of sense and thought. 

When the summer wind faint odours brought 

From mountain flowers, even as it passed, 

His cheek would change, as the noon-day sea 

Which the dying breeze sweeps fitfully. 

If but a cloud the sky o'ercast, 

You might see his colour come and go, 

And the softest strain of music made 

Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade 

Amid the dew of his tender eyes ; 

And the breath, with intermitting flow, 

Made his pale lips quiver and part. 

You might hear the beatings of his heart. 

Quick, but not strong ; and with my tresses 

When oft he playfully would bind 

In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses 

His neck, and win me so to mingle 

In the sweet depth of woven caresses, 

And our faint limbs were intertwined, 



Mas ! the unquiet Life did tingle 

i mine own heart through every vein, 
Like a captive in dreams of liberty, 
Who beats the walls of his stony cell. 
Hut his, it seemed already free, 
Like the shadow of fire surrounding me ! 
On my faint eyes and limbs did dwell 
Thai spirit as it passed, till soon, 
As a frail cloud wandering o'er the moon, 
Beneath its light invisible, 
Is seen when it folds its grey wings again 
To alight on midnight's dusky plain, 
I lived and saw, and the gathering soul 
Passed from beneath that strong control, 
And I fell on a life which was sick with fear 
Of all the woe that now I bear. 

Amid a bloomless myrtle wood, 

On a green and sea-girt promontory, 

Not far from where we dwelt, there stood 

In record of a sweet sad story, 

An altar and a temple bright 

Circled by steps, and o'er the gate 

Was sculptured, " To Fidelity ;" 

And in the shrine an image sate, 

All veiled: but there was seen the light 

Of smiles, which faintly could express 

A mingled pain and tenderness, 

Through that ethereal drapery. 

The left hand held the head, the right — 

Beyond the veil, beneath the skin, 

You might see the nerves quivering within — 

Was forcing the point of a barbed dart 

Into its side-convulsing heart. 

An unskilled hand, yet one informed 

With genius, had the marble warmed 

With that pathetic life. This tale 

It told: A dog had from the sea, 

When the tide was raging fearfully, 

Dragged Lionel's mother, weak and pale, 

Then died beside her on the sand, 

And she that temple thence had planned; 

But it was Lionel's own hand 

Had wrought the image. Each new moon 

That lady did, in this lone fane, 

The rites of a religion sweet, 

Whose god was in her heart and brain : 

The seasons' loveliest flowers were strewn 

On the marble floor beneath her feet, 

And she brought crowns of sea-buds white, 

Whose odour is so sweet and faint, 

And weeds, like branching chrysolite, 

Woven in devices fine and quaint, 

And tears from her brown eyes did stain 

The altar: need but look upon 

That dying statue, fair and wan, 

If tears should cease, to weep again : 

And rare Arabian odours came, 

Through the myrtle copses, steaming thenco 

From the hissing frankincense, 

Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam, 

Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome, 

That ivory dome, whose azure night 

With golden stars, like heaven, was bright 

O'er the split cedars' pointed flame ; 

And the lady's harp would kindle there 

The melody of an old air, 

Softer than sleep ; the villagers 

Mixt their religion up with hers, 

And as they listened round, shed tears. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



21. ■) 



One eve he led me to this fane : 

Daylight on its last purple cloud 

Was lingering grey, and soon her strain 

The nightingale began ; now loud, 

Climbing in circles the windless sky, 

Now dying music ; suddenly 

*Ti- Mattered in a thousand notes, 

And now to the hushed ear it floats 

Like field-smells known in infancy, 

Then failing, soothes the air again. 

We sate within that temple lone, 

Pavilioned round with Parian stone: 

His mother's harp stood near, and oft 

I had awakened music soft 

Amid its wires: the nightingale 

Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale : 

" Now drain the cup," said Lionel, 

'•' Which the poet-bird has crowned so well 

With the wine of her bright and liquid song ! 

Heardst thou not sweet words among 

That heaven-resounding minstrelsy ! 

Heardst thou not, that those who die 

Awake in a world of ecstacy ? 

That love, when limbs are interwoven, 

And sleep, when the night of life is cloven, 

And thought, to the world's dim boundaries 

clinging, 
And music when one beloved is singing, 
Is death ? Let us drain right joyously 
The cup which the sweet bird fills for me." 

He paused, and to my lips he bent 

His own: like spirit his words went 

Through all my limbs with the speed of fire ; 

And his keen eyes, glittering through mine, 

Filled me with the flame divine. 

Which in their orbs was burning far, 

Like the light of an unmeasured star, 

In the sky of midnight dark and deep: 

Yes, 'twas his soul that did inspire 

Sounds, which my skill could ne'er awaken ; 

And first, I felt my fingers sweep 

The harp, and a long quivering cry 

Burst from my lips in symphony : 

The dusk and solid air was shaken, 

As swift and swifter the notes came 

From my touch, that wandered like quick flame, 

And from ray bosom, labouring 

With some unutterable thing : 

The awful sound of my own voice made 

My faint lips tremble ; in some mood 

Of wordless thought Lionel stood 

So pale, that even beside his cheek 

The snowy column from its shade 

Caught whiteness : yet his countenance 

Raised upward, burned with radiance 

Of spirit-piercing joy, whose light, 

Like the moon struggling through the night 

Of whirl wind-rifted clouds, did break 

With beams that might not be confined. 

I paused, but soon his gestures kindled 

New power, as by the moving wind 

The waves are lifted, and my song 

To low soft notes now changed and dwindled, 

And from the twinkling wires among, 

My languid fingers drew and flung 

Circles of life-dissolving sound, 

Yet faint : in aery rings they bound 

My Lionel, who, as every strain 

Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien 



Sunk with the sound relaxedly ; 
And slowly now lie turned to me, 
As slowly faded from his face 
That awful joy : with looks serene 
He was soon drawn to my embrace, 
And my wild song then died away 
In murmurs: words, I dare not say, 
We mixed, and on his lips mine fed 
Till they methought felt still and cold : 
■ What* is it with thee, love !" I said ; 
No word, no look, no motion ! yes, 
There was a change, but spare to guess, 
Nor let that moment's hope be told. 
I looked, and knew that he was dead, 
And fell, as the eagle on the plain 
Falls when life deserts her brain, 
And the mortal lightning is veiled again. 
that I were now dead ! but such, 
Did they not, love, demand too much, 
Those dying murmurs ? He forbad. 

that I once again were mad ! 
And yet, dear Rosalind, not so, 
For I would live to share thy woe. 
Sweet boy ! did I forget thee too ? 
Alas, we know not what we do 
When we speak words. 

No memory more 
Is in my mind of that sea-shore. 
Madness came on me, and a troop 
Of misty shapes did seem to sit 
Beside me, on a vessel's poop, 
And the clear north-wind was driving it. 
Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange 

flowers, 
And the stars methought grew unlike ours, 
And the azure sky and the stormless sea 
Made me believe that 1 had died, 
And waked in a world, which was to me 
Drear hell, though heaven to all beside. 
Then a dead sleep fell on my mind, 
Whilst animal life many long years 
Had rescued from a chasm of tears ; 
And when I woke, I wept to find 
That the same lady, bright and wise, 
With silver locks and quick brown eyes, 
The mother of my Lionel, 
Had tended me in my distress, 
And died some months before. Nor less 
Wonder, but far more peace and joy, 
Brought in that hour my lovely boy; 
For through that trance my soul had well 
The impress of thy being kept ; 
And if I waked, or if I slept, 
No doubt, though memory faithless be, 
Thy image ever dwelt on me ; 
And thus, Lionel ! like thee 
Is our sweet child. 'Tis sure most strange 

1 knew not of so great a change, 

As that which gave him birth, who now 
Is all the solace of my woe. 

That Lionel great wealth had left 
By will to me, and that of all 
The ready lies of law bereft, 
My child and me might well befall. 
But let me think not of the scorn, 
Which from the meanest I have borne, 
When, for my child's beloved sake, 
j I mixed with slaves, to vindicate 






216 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



Th« very laws themselves do make : 

Lei me not say scorn is my fate, 

bs proud, Buffering the same 
With those who live in deathless Easts. 

She osesed.— a Lo, where red morning thro* the 

woods 

Is burning o'er the dew 1" said RosaBiid. 

And with these words they rose, and towards the 

Hood 

Of the blue lake, beneath the loaves now wind 
With equal stops and fingers intertwined : 

Thence to B lonely dwelling, where the shore 

Is shadowed with rooks, and cypresses 

Cloave with their dark green cones the silent 

skies. 
And with their shadows the clear depths below, 
And where a little terrace from its bowers, 
Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers, 
Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er 
The liquid marble of the windless lake ; 
And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar, 
Under the leaves which their green garments 

make, 
They come: 'tis Helen's home, and clean and 

white, 
Like one which tyrants spare on our own land 
In some such solitude, its casements bright 
Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning 

sun, 
And even within 'twas scarce like Italy. 
And when she saw how all things there were 

planned, 
As in an English home, dim memory 
Disturbed poor Rosalind : she stood as one 
Whose mind is where his body cannot be, 
Till Helen led her where her child yet slept, 
And said, " Observe, that brow was Lionel's, 
Those lips w^ere his, and so he ever kept 
One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it. 
You cannot see his eyes, they are two wells 
Of liquid love : let us not wake him yet." 
But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept 
A shower of burning tears, which fell upon 
His face, and so his opening lashes shone 
With tears unlike his own, as he did leap 
In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep. 



So Rosalind and Helen lived together 
Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again, 
Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather 
They wandered in their youth, through sun and 

rain. 
And after many years, for human things 
Change even like the ocean and the wind, 
Her daughter was restored to Rosalind, 
And in their circle thence some visitings 
Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene : 
A lovely child she was, of looks serene, 
And motions which o'er things indifferent shed 
The grace and gentleness from whence they came. 
And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed 
From the same flowers of thought, until each mind 
Like springs which mingle in one flood became, 
And in their union soon their parents saw 
The shadow of the peace denied to them. 
And Rosalind, — for when the living stem 
Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall, — 
Died ere her time ; and with deep grief and awe 
The pale survivors followed her remains 
Beyond the region of dissolving rains, 
Up the cold mountain she was wont to call 
Her tomb ; and on Chiavenna's precipice 
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice, 
Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun, 
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun, 
The last, when it had sunk ; and through the night 
The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round 
Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home, 
Whose sad inhabitants each year would come, 
With willing steps climbing that rugged height, 
And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound 
With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's 

despite, 
Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light : 
Such flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom 
Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb. 

Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould, 

Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led 

Into the peace of his dominion cold : 

She died among her kindred, being old ; 

And know, that if love die not in the dead 

As in the living, none of mortal kind 

Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind. 



LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 



217 



LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 



Many a green isle needs must be 

In the deep wide sea of misery, 

Or the mariner, worn and wan, 

Never thus could voyage on 

Day and night, and night and day, 

Drifting on his dreary way, 

With the solid darkness black 

Closing round his vessel's track ; 

Whilst above, the sunless sky, 

Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 

And behind the tempest fleet 

Hurries on with lightning feet, 

Riving sail, and cord, and plank, 

Till the ship has almost drank 

Death from the o'er-brimming deep ; 

And sinks down, down, like that sleep 

When the dreamer seems to be 

Weltering through eternity ; 

And the dim low line before 

Of a dark and distant shore 

Still recedes, as ever still 

Longing with divided will ; 

But no power to seek or shun, 

He is ever drifted on 

O'er the unreposing wave, 

To the haven of the grave. 

What, if there no friends will greet ; 

What, if there no heart will meet 

His with love's impatient beat ; 

Wander wheresoe'er he may, 

Can he dream before that day 

To find refuge from distress 

In friendship's smile, in love's caress ? 

Then 'twill wreak him little woe 

Whether such there be or no : 

Senseless is the breast, and cold, 

Which relenting love would fold ; 

Bloodless are the veins and chill 

Which the pulse of pain did fill : 

Every little living nerve 

That from bitter words did swerve 

Round the tortured lips and brow, 

Are like sapless leaflets now 

Frozen upon December's bough. 



On the beach of a northern sea 
Which tempests shake eternally, 
As once the wretch there lay to sleep, 
Lies a solitary heap, 
One white skull and seven dry bones, 
On the margin of the stones, 
Where a few grey rushes stand, 
Boundaries of the sea and land : 
Nor is heard one voice of wail 
But the sea-mews, as they sail 
O'er the billows of the gale ; 
Or the whirlwind up and down 
Howling, like a slaughtered town, 



When a king in glory rides 
Through the pomp of fratricides : 
Those unburied bones around 
There is many a mournful sound ; 
There is no lament for him, 
Like a sunless vapour, dim, 
Who once clothed with life and thought 
What now moves nor murmurs not. 

Ay, many flowering islands lie 

In the waters of wide Agony : 

To such a one this morn was led 

My bark, by soft winds piloted. 

'Mid the mountains Euganean, 

I stood listening to the pa?an 

With which the legioned rooks did hail 

The sun's uprise majestical ; 

Gathering round with wings all hoar, 

Through the dewy mist they soar 

Like grey shades, till the eastern heaven 

Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, 

Flecked with fire and azure, he 

In the unfathomable sky, 

So their plumes of purple grain, 

Starred with drops of golden rain, 

Gleam above the sunlight woods, 

As in silent multitudes 

On the morning's fitful gale 

Through the broken mist they sail ; 

And the vapours cloven and gleaming 

Follow down the dark steep streaming, 

Till all is bright, and clear, and still, 

Round the solitary hill. 

Beneath is spread like a green sea 
The waveless plain of Lombardy, 
Bounded by the vaporous air, 
Islanded by cities fair ; 
Underneath day's azure eyes. 
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, — 
A peopled labyrinth of walls, 
Amphitrite's destined halls, 
Which her hoar}- sire now paves 
With his blue and beaming waves. 
Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, 
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined 
On the level quivering line 
Of the waters crystalline ; 
And before that chasm of light, 
As within a furnace bright, 
Column, tower, and dome, and spire, 
Shine like obelisks of fire, 
Pointing with inconstant motion 
From the altar of dark ocean 
To the sapphire-tinted skies ; 
As the flames of sacrifice 
From the marble shrines did rise 
As to pierce the dome of gold 
Where Apollo spoke of old. 



218 POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 


Son-giil City ! thou hast been 


O'er a mighty thunder-fit, 


Ocean's child, and then his queen ; 


( hastening terror : what though yet 


Now is ooine ■ darker day, 


Poesy's unfailing river, 


And thou soon must be his prey, 


Which through Albion winds for ever, 


If the power that raised thee here 


Lashing with melodious wave 


Hallow so thy watery bier. 


Many a sacred poet's grave, 


A leas drear roin thou than now. 


Mourn its latest nursling fled ! 


With thy conquest-branded brow 


What though thou with all thy dead 


Stooping to the slave of slaves 


Scarce can for this fame repay 


Prom thy throne among the waves, 


Aught thine own, — oh, rather say, 


Wilt thou he, when the sea-mew 


Though thy sins and slaveries foul 


Flies, as ones before it flew, 


Overcloud a sunlike soul ! 


O'er thine isles depopulate, 


As the ghost of Homer clings 


And all is in its ancient state, 


Round Scamander's wasting springs ; 


Save where many a palace-gate 


As divinest Shakspeare's might 


With green sea-flowers overgrown 


Fills Avon and the world with light, 


Like a rock of ocean's own, 


Like omniscient power, which he 


Topples o'er the ahandon'd sea 


Imaged 'mid mortality ; 


As the tides change sullenly. 


As the love from Petrarch's urn, 


The fisher on his watery way, 


Yet amid yon hills doth burn, 


Wandering at the close of day, 


A quenchless lamp, by which the heart 


Will spread his sail and seize his oar, 


Sees things unearthly ; so thou art, 


Till he pass the gloomy shore, 


Mighty spirit : so shall be 


Lest thy dead should, from their sleep 


The city that did refuge thee. 


Bursting o'er the starlight deep, 




Lead a rapid masque of death 


Lo, the sun floats up the sky, 
Like thought-winged Liberty, 


O'er the waters of his path. 




Till the universal light 


Those who alone thy towers behold 


Seems to level plain and height ; 


Quivering through aerial gold, 


From the sea a mist has spread, 


As I now behold them here, 


And the beams of morn lie dead 


Would imagine not they were 


On the towers of Venice now, 


Sepulchres, where human forms, 


Like its glory long ago. 


Like pollution-nourish'd worms, 


By the skirts of that grey cloud 


To the corpse of greatness cling, 


Many-domed Padua proud 


Murdered and now mouldering : 


Stands, a peopled solitude, 


But if Freedom should awake 


'Mid the harvest shining plain, 


In her omnipotence, and shake 


Where the peasant heaps his grain 


From the Celtic Anarch's hold 


In the garner of his foe, 


All the keys of dungeons cold, 


And the milk-white oxen slow 


Where a hundred cities lie 


With the purple vintage strain, 


Chained like thee, ingloriously, 


Heaped upon the creaking wain, 


Thou and all thy sister band 


That the brutal Celt may swill 


Might adorn this sunny land, 


Drunken sleep with savage will ; 


Twining memories of old time 


And the sickle to the sword 


With new virtues more sublime ; 


Lies unchanged, though many a lord, 


If not, perish thou and they ; 


Like a weed whose shade is poison, 


Clouds which stain truth's rising day 


Overgrows this region's foison, 


By her sun consumed away, 


Sheaves of whom are ripe to come 


Earth can spare ye ; while like flowers, 


To destruction's harvest-home : 


In the waste of years and hours, 


Men must reap the things they sow, 


From your dust new nations spring 


Force from force must ever flow, 


With more kindly blossoming. 


Or worse ; but 'tis a bitter woe 




That love or reason cannot change 


Perish • let there only be 


The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. 


Floating o'er thy hearthless sea, 




As the garment of thy sky 


Padua, thou within whose walls 


Clothes the world immortally, 


Those mute guests at festivals, 


One remembrance, more sublime 


Son and Mother, Death and Sin, 


Than the tattered pall of Time, 


Played at dice for Ezzelin, 


Which scarce hides thy visage wan : 


Till Death cried, " I win, I win ! " 


That a tempest- cleaving swan 


And Sin cursed to lose the wager, 


Of the songs of Albion, 


But Death promised, to assuage her, 


Driven from his ancestral streams, 


That he would petition for 


By the might of evil dreams, 


Her to be made Vice-Emperor, 


Found a nest in thee ; and Ocean 


When the destined years were o'er, 


Welcomed him with such emotion 


Over all between the Po 


That its joy grew his, and sprung 


And the eastern Alpine snow, 


From his lips like music flung 


Under the mighty Austrian. 



LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 



210 



Sin smiled so as Sin only can, 
And since that time, ay, long before, 
Both have ruled from shore to shore, 
That incestuous pair, who follow 
Tyrants as the sun the swallow, 
As Repentance follows Crime, 
And as changes follow Time. 

Tn thine halls the lamp of learning, 

Padua, now no more is burning ; 

Like a meteor, whose wild way 

Is lost over the grave of day, 

It gleams betrayed and to betray : 

Once remotest nations came 

To adore that sacred flame, 

When it lit not many a hearth 

On this cold and gloomy earth ; 

Now new fix-es from Antique light 

Spring beneath the wide world's might ; 

But their spark lies dead in thee, 

Trampled out by tyranny. 

As the Norway woodman quells, 

In the depth of piny dells, 

One light flame among the brakes, 

While the boundless forest shakes, 

And its mighty trunks are torn 

By the fire thus lowly born ; 

The spark beneath his feet is dead, 

lie starts to see the flames it fed 

Howling through the darkened sky 

With myriad tongues victoriously, 

And sinks down in fear : so thou, 

O tyranny ! beholdest now 

Light around thee, and thou hearest 

The loud flames ascend, and fearest : 

Grovel on the earth ; ay, hide 

In the dust thy purple pride ! 

Noon descends around me now : 
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, 
When a soft and purple mist 
Like a vaporous amethyst, 
Or an air-dissolved star 
Mingling light and fragrance, far 
From the curved horizon's bound 
To the point of heaven's profound, 
Fills the overflowing sky ; 
And -the plains that silent lie 
Underneath ; the leaves unsodden 
Where the infant frost has trodden 
With his morning-winged feet, 
Whose bright print is gleaming yet ; 
And the red and golden vines, 
Piercing with their trellised lines 
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness ; 
The dun and bladed grass no less, 
Pointing from this hoary tower 
In the windless air ; the flower 
Glimmering at my feet ; the line 
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine 
In the south dimly islanded ; 
And the Alps, whose snows are spread 
High between the clouds and sun ; 
And of living things each one ; 



And my spirit, which so long 

Darkened this swift stream of song, 

Interpenetrated lie 

By the glory of the sky ; 

Be it love, light, harmony, 

Odour, or the soul of all 

Which from heaven like dew doth fall, 

Or the mind which feeds this verse 

Peopling the lone universe. 

Noon descends, and after noon 

Autumn's evening meets me soon, 

Leading the infantine moon, 

And that one star, which to her 

Almost seems to minister 

Half the crimson light she brings 

From the sunset's radiant springs : 

And the soft dreams of the morn 

(Which like winged winds had borne 

To that silent isle, which lies 

'Mid remembered agonies, 

The frail bark of this lone being), 

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, 

And its ancient pilot, Pain, 

Sits beside the helm again. 

Other flowering isles must be 

In the sea of life and agony : 

Other spirits float and flee 

O'er that gulf : even now, perhaps, 

On some rock the wild wave wraps, 

With folding wings they waiting sit 

For my bark, to pilot it 

To some calm and blooming cove, 

Where for me, and those I love, 

May a windless bower be built, 

Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 

In a dell 'mid lawny hills, 

Which the wild sea-murmur fills, 

And soft sunshine, and the sound 

Of old forests echoing round, 

And the light and smell divine 

Of all flowers that breathe and shine. 

We may live so happy there, 

That the spirits of the air, 

Envying us, may even entice 

To our healing paradise 

The polluting multitude ; 

But their rage would be subdued 

By that clime divine and calm, 

And the winds whose wings rain balm 

On the uplifted soul, and leaves • 

Under which the bright sea heaves ; 

While each breathless interval 

In their whisperings musical 

The inspired soul supplies 

With its own deep melodies ; 

And the love which heals all strife 

Circling, like the breath of life, 

All things in that sweet abode 

With its own mild brotherhood. 

They, not it, would change ; and soon 

Every sprite beneath the moon 

Would repent its envy vain, 

And the earth grow young again. 



ooo 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 181S. 



JULIAN AND MADDALO 
ft Canurr&ittou. 



The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, 
The goats with the green leaves of budding spring, 
Are saturated not — nor Love with tears. 

Virgil's Gallus. 



Count Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman of ancient 
family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much 
in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his 
magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the 
most consummate genius ; and capable, if he would 
direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the 
redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weak- 
ness to be proud : he derives, from a comparison of 
his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects 
that surround him, an intense apprehension of the 
nothingness of human life. His passions and his 
powers are incomparably greater than those of other 
men, and, instead of the latter having been employed 
in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each 
other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for 
want of objects which it can consider worthy of ex- 
ertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can 
find no other word to express the concentered and 
impatient feelings which consume him ; but it is on 
his own hopes and affections only that he seems to 
trample, for in social life no human being can be more 
gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He 
is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious con- 
versation is a sort of intoxication ; men are held by it 
as by a spell. He has travelled much ; and there is 



an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures 
in different countries. 

Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately 
attached to those philosophical notions which assert 
the power of man over his own mind, and the 
immense improvements of which, by the extinction of 
certain moral superstitions, human society may yet be 
susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world, 
he is for ever speculating how good may be made 
superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at 
all things reputed holy ; and Maddalo takes a wicked 
pleasure in drawing out his tauuts against religion. 
What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly 
known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is 
conjectured by his friends to possess some good quali- 
ties. How far this is possible the pious reader will 
determine. Julian is rather serious. 

Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems 
by his own account to have been disappointed in love. 
He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person 
when in his right senses. His story, told at length, 
might be like many other stories of the same kind : 
the unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps 
be found a sufficient comment for the text of every 
heart. 



I robe one evening with Count Maddalo 

Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow 

Of Adria towards Venice : a bare strand 

Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, 

Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, 

Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, 

Is this, an uninhabited sea-side, 

Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, 

Abandons ; and no other object breaks 

The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes 

Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes 

A narrow space of level sand thereon, 

W'here 'twas our wont to ride while day went down. 

This ride was my delight. I love all waste 

And solitary places ; where we taste 

The pleasure of believing what we see 

Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be : 

And such was this wide ocean, and this shore 

More barren than its billows : and yet more 



Than all, with a remembered friend I love 
To ride as then I rode ; — for the winds drove 
The living spray along the sunny air 
Into our faces ; the blue heavens were bare, 
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north : 
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth 
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent 
Into our hearts aerial merriment. 

So, as we rode, we talked ; and the swift thought, 
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, 
But flew from brain to brain ; — such glee was ours, 
Charged with light memories of remembered hours, 
None slow enough for sadness : till we came 
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. 
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now 
The sun was sinking, and the wind also. 
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be 
Talk interrupted with such raillery 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



221 



As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn 

The thoughts it would extinguish : — 'twas forlorn, 

Yet pleasing ; such as once, so poets tell, 

The devils held within the dales of hell, 

Concerning God, freewill, and destiny. 

Of all that Earth has been, or yet may be ; 

All that vain men imagine or believe, 

Or hope can paint, or suffering can achieve, 

We descanted ; and I (for ever still 

Is it not wise to make the best of ill 1) 

Argued against despondency ; but pride 

Made my companion take the darker side. 

The sense that he was greater than his kind 

Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind 

By gazing on its owm exceeding light. 

Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight 

Over the horizon of the mountains — Oh ! 

How beautiful is sunset, when the glow 

Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, 

Thou paradise of exiles, Italy ! 

Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the 

towers, 
Of cities they encircle ! — It was ours 
To stand on thee, beholding it : and then, 
Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men 
Were waiting for us with the gondola. 
As those who pause on some delightful way, 
Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood 
Looking upon the evening, and the flood 
Which lay between the city and the shore, 
Paved with the image of the sky : the hoar 
And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, 
Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared 
Between the east and west ; and half the sky 
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, 
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew 
Down the steep west into a wondrous hue 
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent 
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent 
Among the many-folded hills — they were 
Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, 
As seen from Lido through the harbour piles, 
The likeness of a clump of peaked isles — 
And then, as if the earth and sea had been 
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen 
Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, 
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came 
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made 
Their very peaks transparent. " Ere it fade," 
Said my companion, " I will show you soon 
A better station." So, o'er the lagune 
We glided ; and from that funereal bark 
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark 
How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, 
Its temples and its palaces did seem 
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. 
I was about to speak, when — " We are even 
Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, 
And bade the gondolieri cease to row. 
" Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well 
If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." 
I looked, and saw between us and the sun 
A building on an island, such a one 
As age to age might add, for uses vile, — 
A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile ; 
And on the top an open tower, where hung 
A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung, 
We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue : 
The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled 
In strong and black relief- — " What we behold 



Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower," — 

Said Maddalo ; " and even at this hour, 

Those who may cross the water hear that bell, 

Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, 

To vespers." — " As much skill as need to pray, 

In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they, 

To their stern maker," I replied. — " 0, ho ! 

You talk as in year* past," said Maddalo. 

" 'Tis strange men change not. You were ever still 

Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel, 

A wolf for the meek lambs : if you can't swim, 

Beware of providence." I looked on him, 

But the gay smile had faded from his eye. 

" And such," he cried, " is our mortality ; 

And this must be the emblem and the sign 

Of what should be eternal and divine ; 

And like that black and dreary bell, the soul, 

Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll 

Our thoughts and our desires to meet below 

Round the rent heart, and pray — as madmen do ; 

For what ? they know not, till the night of death, 

As sunset that strange vision, severeth 

Our memory from itself, and us from all 

We sought, and yet were baffled." I recall 

The sense of what he said, although I mar 

The force of his expressions. The broad star 

Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill ; 

And the black bell became invisible ; 

And the red tower looked grey ; and all between, 

The churches, ships, and palaces, were seen 

Huddled in gloom ; into the purple sea 

The orange hues of heaven sunk silently. 

We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola 

Conveyed me to my lodging by the way. 

The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim : 
Ere Maddalo arose 1 called on him, 
And whilst I waited with his child I played ; 
A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made ; 
A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being ; 
Graceful without design, and unforeseeing ; 
With eyes — Oh ! speak not of her eyes I which 
Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam [seem 
With such deep meaning as we never see 
But in the human countenance. With me 
She was a special favourite : I had nursed 
Her fine and feeble limbs, when she came first 
To this bleak world ; and yet she seemed to know 
On second sight her ancient playfellow, 
Less changed than she was by six months or so. 
For, after her first shyness was worn out, 
We sate there, rolling billiard balls about, 
When the Count entered. Salutations passed : 
" The words you spoke last night might well have 
A darkness on my spirit : — if man be [cast 

The passive thing you say, I should not see 
Much harm in the religions and old saws, 
(Tho' i" may never own such leaden laws) 
Which break a teachless nature to the yoke : 
Mine is another faith." — Thus much I spoke, 
And, noting he replied not, added — " See 
This lovely child ; blithe, innocent, and free ; 
She spends a happy time, with little care ; 
While we to such sick thoughts subjected are, 
As came on you last night. It is our will 
Which thus enchains us to permitted ill. 
We might be otherwise ; we might be all 
We dream of, happy, high, majestical. 
Where is the beauty, love, and truth, we seek, 
But in our minds 1 And, if we were not weak, 



■2-2 2 



POEMS WRITTEN I\ 1818. 



Should we be less in deed than in desire I 
•• \\. it we were not weak)" end we aspire, 

How \;iiul\ I to be strong," said Maddalo : 
■ Von talk Utopian "— 

* It remains to know," 
I then rejoined, " and those who try, may find 
How strong the chains are whiah our spirit bind: 
Brittle perchance as straw. We are assured 
Much may be conquered, much may be endured, 
Of what degrades and crushes us. We know 
Thai we havo power over ourselves to do 

And suffer — ii'hat, we know not till wo try ; 
But something nobler than to live and die : 
*>o taught the kings of old philosophy, 
Who reigned before religion made men blind ; 
And those who suffer with their suffering kind, 
Yet feel this faith, religion." 

" My dear friend," 
Said Maddalo, "my judgment will not bend 
To your opinion, though I think you might 
Make such a system refutation-tight, 
As far as words go. I knew one like you, 
Who to this city came some months ago, 
With whom I argued in this sort, — and he 
Is now gone mad — and so he answered me, 
Poor fellow ! — But if you would like to go, 
We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show 
How vain are such aspiring theories." — 

" I hope to prove the induction otherwise, 
And that a want of that true theory still, 
Which seeks a soul of goodness in things ill, 
Or in himself or others, has thus bowed 
His being : — there are some by nature proud, 
Who, patient in all else, demand but this — 
To love and be beloved with gentleness : — 
And being scorned, what wonder if they die 
Some living death ? This is not destiny, 
But man's own wilful ill." 

As thus I spoke, 
Servants announced the gondola, and we 
Through the fast-falling rain and high- wrought sea 
Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands. 
We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands, 
Fierce yells and bowlings, and lamentings keen, 
And laughter where complaint had merrier been, 
Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs 
Into an old court-yard. I heard on high, 
Then, fragments of most touching melody, 
But looking up saw not the singer there. — 
Thro' the black bars in the tempestuous air 
I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing, 
Long tangled locks flung wildly forth and flowing, 
Of those on a sudden who were beguiled 
Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled, 
Hearing sweet sounds. Then I : 

" Methinks there were 
A cure of these with patience and kind care, 
If music can thus move. But what is he, 
Whom we seek here ? " 

" Of his sad history 
I know but this," said Maddalo : " he came" 
To Venice a dejected man, and fame 
Said he was wealthy, or he had been so. 
Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe; 



Hut he was ever talking in such sort 

As you do, — but more sadly ; — he seemed hurt, 

Even as a man with his peculiar wrong, 

To hear but of the oppression of the strong, 

Or those absurd deceits (I think with you 

In some respects, you know) which carry through 

The excellent impostors of this earth 

When they outface detection. He had worth, 

Foor fellow ! but a humourist in his way." — 

— " Alas, what drove him mad ? " 

" I cannot say : 
A lady came with him from France, and when 
She left him and returned, he wandered then 
About yon lonely isles of desert sand, 
Till he grew wild. He had no cash nor land 
Remaining : — the police had brought him here — 
Some fancy took him, and he would not bear 
Removal, so I fitted up for him 
Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim ; 
And sent him busts, and books, and urns for 

flowers, 
Which had adorned his life in happier hours, 
And instruments of music. You may guess 
A stranger could do little more or less 
For one so gentle and unfortunate — 
And those are his sweet strains which charm tho 

weight 
From madmen's chains, and make this hell appear 
A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear." 

" Nay, this was kind of you, — he had no claim, 
As the world says.' ' 

" None but the very same 
Which I on all mankind, were I, as he, 
Fallen to such deep reverse. His melody 
Is interrupted now : we hear the din 
Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin : 
Let us now visit him : after this strain, 
He ever communes with himself again, 
And sees and hears not any." 

Having said 
These words, we called the keeper, and he led 
To an apartment opening on the sea — 
There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully 
Near a piano, his pale fingers twined 
One with the other ; and the ooze and wind 
Rushed through an open casement, and did sway 
His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray : 
His head was leaning on a music-book, 
And he was muttering; and his lean limbs shook. 
His lips were pressed against a folded leaf, 
In hue too beautiful for health, and grief 
Smiled in their motions as they lay apart, 
As one who wrought from his own fervid heart 
The eloquence of passion : soon he raised 
His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed, 
And spoke,— sometimes as one who wrote, and 

thought 
His words might move some heart that heeded not, 
If sent to distant lands ;— and then as one 
Reproaching deeds never to be undone, 
With wondering self-compassion; — then his speech 
Was lost in grief, and then his words came each 
Unmodulated and expressionless, — 
But that from one jarred accent you might guess 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



223 






It was despair made them so uniform : 
And all the while the loud and gusty storm 
Hissed through the window, and we stood behind, 
Stealing his accents from the envious wind, 
Unseen. I yet remember what he said 
Distinctly, such impression his words made. 

" Month after month," he cried, " to bear this 
load, 
And, as a jade urged by the whip and goad, 
To drag life on — which like a heavy chain 
Lengthens behind with many a link of pain, 
And not to speak my grief — 0, not to dare 
To give a human voice to my despair ; 
But live, and move, and, wretched thing ! smile on, 
As if I never went aside to groan, 
And wear this mask of falsehood even to those 
"Who are most dear — not for my own repose. 
Alas ! no scorn, nor pain, nor hate, could be 
So heavy as that falsehood is to me — 
But that I cannot bear more altered faces 
Than needs must be, more changed and cold 

embraces, 
More misery, disappointment, and mistrust, 
To own me for their father. Would the dust 
Were covered in upon my body now ! 
That the life ceased to toil within my brow ! 
And then these thoughts would at the last be fled : 
Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead. 

" What Power delights to torture us ? I know 
That to myself I do not wholly owe 
What now I suffer, though in part I may. 
Alas ! none strewed fresh flowers upon the way 
Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale Tain, 
My shadow, which will leave me not again. 
If I have erred, there was no joy in error, 
But pain, and insult, and unrest, and terror ; 
I have not, as some do, bought penitence 
With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence ; 
For then if love, and tenderness, and truth, 
Had overlived Hope's momentary youth, 
My creed should have redeemed me from repenting ; 
But loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting 
Met love excited by far other seeming 
Until the end was gained: — as one from dreaming 
Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state 
Such as it is — 

" thou, my spirit's mate ! 
Who, for thou art compassionate and wise, 
Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes 
If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see ; 
My secret groans must be unheard by thee ; 
Thou wouldst weep tears, bitter as blood, to know 
Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe. 
Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed 
In friendship, let me not that name degrade, 
By placing on your hearts the secret load 
Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road 
To peace, and that is truth, which follow ye ! 
Love sometimes leads astray to misery. 
Yet think not, though subdued (and I may well 
Say that I am subdued) — that the full hell 
Within me would infect the untainted breast 
Of sacred nature with its own unrest ; 
As some perverted beings think to find 
In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind 
Which scorn or hate hath wounded. — 0,how vain ! 
The dagger heals not, but may rend again. 



Believe that I am ever still the same 

In creed as in resolve ; and what may tame 

My heart, must leave the understanding free, 

Or all would sink under this agony. — 

Nor dream that I will join the vulgar lie, 

Or with my silence sanction tyranny, 

Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain 

In any madness which the world calls gain ; 

Ambition, or revenge, or thoughts as stern 

As those which make me what I am, or turn 

To avarice, or misanthropy, or lust : 

Heap on me soon, grave, thy welcome dust ! 

Till then the dungeon may demand its prey ; 

And Poverty and Shame may meet and say, 

Halting beside me in the public way, — 

' That love-devoted youth is ours : let's sit 

Beside him : he may live some six months yet.' — 

Or the red scaffold, as our country bends, 

May ask some willing victim ; or ye, friends, 

May fall under some sorrow, which this heart 

Or hand may share, or vanquish, or avert ; 

I am prepared, in truth, with no proud joy, 

To do or suffer aught, as when a boy 

I did devote to justice, and to love, 

My nature, worthless now. 

" I must remove 
A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn aside ! 

! pallid as death's dedicated bride, 
Thou mockery which art sitting by my side, 
Am I not wan like thee? At the grave's call 

1 haste, invited to thy wedding-ball, 

To meet the ghastly paramour, for whom 
Thou hast deserted me, — and made the tomb 
Thy bridal bed. But I beside thy feet 
Will lie, and watch ye from my winding-sheet 
Thus — wideawake though dead — Yet stay, 0, stay ! 
Go not so soon — I know not what I say — 
Hear but my reasons — I am mad, I fear, 
My fancy is o'erwrought — thou art not here, 

Pale art thou 'tis most true but thou art gone — 

Thy work is finished ; I am left alone. 



" Nay was it I who woo'd thee to this breast, 
Which like a serpent thou envenomest 
As in repayment of the warmth it lent ? 
Didst thou not seek me for thine own content? 
Did not thy love awaken mine ? I thought 
That thou wert she who said ' You kiss me not 
Ever ; I fear you do not love me now.' 
In truth I loved even to my overthrow 
Her who would fain forget these words, but they 
Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away. 



" You say that I am proud ; that when I speak, 
My lip is tortured with the wrongs, which break 
The spirit it expresses. — Never one 
Humbled himself before, as I have done ; 
Even the instinctive worm on which we tread 
Turns, though it wound not — then, with prostrate 

head, 
Sinks in the dust, and writhes like me — and dies : 

No : — wears a living death of agonies j 

As the slow shadows of the pointed grass 
Mark the eternal periods, its pangs pass, 
Slow, ever-moving, making moments be 
As mine seem, — each an immortality 1 



m 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



■ That you had never Been m« ! never beard 
Mv vmwl and more khan all had ne'er endured 

The deep pollution of my loathed embrace ; 

That your eves ne'er had lied love in inv face ! 
That, like some nianiae monk, 1 had torn out 
The nerves o\' manhood by their bleeding root 
With mine own quivering fingers! so that ne'er 
Our hearts had for a moment mingled there, 
To disunite in horror ! These wen 1 not 
With thee like some suppressed and hideous thought, 
Which Hits athwart our musings, hut can find 
N.» rest within a pure and gentle mind — 
Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word, 
And sear'dst my memory o'er them, — for I heard 
And ean forget not — they were ministered, 
One after one, those curses. Mix them up i 
Like self-destroying poisons in one cup ; 
And they will make one blessing, which thou ne'er 
Didst imprecate for on me death! 

" It were 
A cruel punishment for one most cruel, 
If such can love, to make that love the fuel 
Of the mind's hell — hate, scorn, remorse, despair : 
But me, whose heart a stranger's tear might wear 
As water-drops the sandy fountain stone ; 
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan 
For woes which others hear not, and could see 
The absent with the glass of phantasy, 
And near the poor and trampled sit and weep. 
Following the captive to his dungeon deep ; 
Me, who am as a nerve o'er which do creep 
The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth, 
And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth, 
When all beside was cold : — that thou on me 
Should rain these plagues of blistering agony — 
Such curses are from lips once eloquent 
With love's too partial praise ! Let none relent 
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name 
Henceforth, if an example for the same 
They seek : — for thou on me lookedst so and so, 
And didst speak thus and thus. I live to show 
How much men bear and die not. 



" Thou wilt tell, 
With the grimace of hate, how horrible 
It was to meet my love when thine grew less ; 
Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address 
Such features to love's work .... This taunt, 

though true, 
(For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue 
Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship) 
Shall not be thy defence : for since thy lip 
Met mine first, years long past, — since thine eye 

kindled 
With soft fire under mine, — I have not dwindled, 
Nor changed in mind, or body, or in aught 
But as love changes what it loveth not 
After long years and many trials. 



" How vain 
Are words ; I thought never to speak again, 
Not even in secret, not to my own heart — 
But from my lips the unwilling accents start, 
And from my pen the words flow as I write, 
Dazzling my eyes with scalding tear3 — my sight 



Is dim to Bee that (charactered in vain 

On this unfeeling leaf) which burns the brain 

And eats into it, blotting all things fair, 
And wise and good, which time had written there. 
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see 
The work of their own hearts, and that must be 
Our chastisement or recompense. — O child ! 
I would that thine were like to be more mila 
For both our wretched sakes, — for thine the most, 
Who feel'st already all that thou hast lost, 
Without the power to wish it thine again. 
And, as slow years pass, a funereal train, 
Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend 
Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend 
No thought on my dead memory ? 
****** 

" Alas, love 1 
Fear me not : against thee I'd not move 
A finger in despite. Do I not live 
That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve \ 
I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate ; 
And, that thy lot may be less desolate 
Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain 
From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain. 
Then — when thou speakest of me — never say, 
' He could forgive not.' — Here I cast away 
All human passions, all revenge, all pride ; 
I think, speak, act no ill ; I do but hide 
Under these words, like embers, every spark 
Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark 
The grave is yawning : — as its roof shall cover 
My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, 
So let oblivion hide this grief. — The air 
Closes upon my accents as despair 
Upon my heart — let 'death upon my care !" 

He ceased, and overcome, leant back awhile ; 
Then rising, with a melancholy smile, 
Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept 
A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept, 
And muttered some familiar name, and we 
Wept without shame in his society. 
I think I never was impressed so much ! 
The man, who was not, must have lacked a touch 
Of human nature. — Then we lingered not, 
Although our argument was quite forgot ; 
But, calling the attendants, went to dine 
At Maddalo's ; — yet neither cheer nor wine 
Could give us spirits, for we talked of him, 
And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim. 
And we agreed it was some dreadful ill 
Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable, 
By a dear friend ; some deadly change in love 
Of one vowed deeply which he dreamed not of; 
For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot 
Of falsehood in his mind, which flourished not 
But in the light of all-beholding truth ; 
And having stamped this canker on his youth, 
She had abandoned him : — and how much more 
Might be his woe, we guessed not : — he had store 
Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess 
From his nice habits and his gentleness : 
These now were lost — it were a grief indeed 
If he had changed one unsustaining reed 
For all that such a man might else adorn. 
The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn ; 
For the wild language of his grief was high — 
Such as in measure were called poetry. 
And I remember one remark, which then 
Maddalo made : he said — " Most wretched men 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



22fi 






Ave cradled into poetry by wrong : 

They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 

If I had been an unconnected man, 

I, from the moment, should have formed some 

plan 
Never to leave sweet Venice : for to me 
1 1 was delight to ride by the lone sea : 
And then the town is silent — one may write 
Or read in gondolas, by day or night, 
Having the little brazen lamp alight, 
Unseen, uninterrupted : — books are there, 
Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair 
Which were twin-born with poetry ! — and all 
We seek in towns, with little to recall 
Regret for the green country : — I might sit 
In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit 
And subtle talk would cheer the whiter night, 
And make me know myself: — and the fire light 
Would flash upon our faces, till the day 
Might dawn, and make me wonder at my stay. 
But I had friends in London too. The chief 
Attraction here was that I sought relief 
From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought 
Within me — 'twas perhaps an idle thought, 
But I imagined that if, day by day, 
I watched him, and seldom went away, 
And studied all the beatings of his heart 
With zeal, as men study some stubborn art 
For their own good, and could by patience find 
An entrance to the caverns of his mind, 
I might reclaim him from his dark estate. 
In friendships I had been most fortunate, 
Yet never saw I one whom I would call 
More willingly my friend : — and this was all 
Accomplished not ; — such dreams of baseless good 
Oft come and go, in crowds or solitude, 
And leave no trace ! — but what I now designed 
Made, for long years, impression on my mind. 
The following morning, urged by my affairs, 
I left bright Venice. 



After many years, 
And many changes, T returned : the name 
Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same ; 
But Maddalo was travelling, far away, 
Among the mountains of Armenia. 
His dog was dead: his child had now become 
A woman, such as it has been my doom 
To meet with few ; a wonder of this earth, 
Where there is little of transcendent worth, — 
Like one of Shakspeare's women. Kindly bhe, 
And with a manner beyond courtesy, 
Received her father's friend ; and, when I asked, 
Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked, 
And told, as she had heai'd, the mournful tale : 
" That the poor sufferer's health began to fail 
Two years from my departure : but that then 
The lady, who had left him, came again ; 
Her mien had been imperious, but she now 
Looked meek ; perhaps remorse had brought 

her low. 
Her coming made him better ; and they stayed 
Together at my father's, — for I played, 
As I remember, with the lady's shawl ; 
I might be six years old : — But, after all, 
She left him."— 

" Why, her heart must have been tough ; 
How did it end ?" 

" And was not this enough ? 
They met, they parted." 

" Child, is there no more V 

" Something within that interval which bore 
The stamp of why they parted, how they met ; — 
Yet, if thine aged eyes disdain to wet 
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered 
Ask me no more ; but let the silent years [tears, 
Be closed and cered over their memory, 
As yon mute marble where their corpses lie." 
I urged and questioned still : she told me how 
All happened — but the cold world shall not know. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. 



Listen, listen, Mary mine, 

To the whisper of the Apennine, 

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, 

Or like the sea on a northern shore, 

Heard in its raging ebb and flow 

By the captives pent in the cave below. 

The Apennine in the light of day 

Is a mighty mountain dim and grey, 

Which between the earth and sky doth lay ; 

But when night comes, a chaos dread 

On the dim starlight then is spread, 

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. 

May Ath, 1818. 



THE PAST. 



Wilt thou forget the happy hours 
Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, 
Heaping over their corpses cold 
Blossoms and leaves instead of mould ? 
Blossoms which were the joys that fell, 
And leaves, the hopes that yet remain. 

Forget the dead, the past ? yet 

There are ghosts that may take revenge for it ; 

Memories that make the heart a tomb, 

Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, 

And with ghastly whispers tell 

That joy, once lost, is pain. 



286 



POEMS W KITTEN IN 1818. 



THE WOODMAN AM) Till: NIGHTINGALE. 



A woomun, whose rough heart was out of tune 

(I think such hearts yet never came to good), 

Haled bo hear, under the stars or moon, 

One nightingale in an interlluous wood 
Satiate the hungry dark with melody ; — 
And, ai ■ vale is watered hy a flood, 

the moonlight fills the open sky 
Straggling with darkness — as a tuberose 
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie 

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, 
The singing of that happy nightingale 
In this sweet forest, from the golden close 

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail, 
Was interfused upon the silentness ; 
The folded roses and the violets pale 

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss 
Of heaven with all its planets ; the dull ear 
Of the night-cradled earth ; the loneliness 

Of the circumfluous waters, — every sphere 
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, 
And every wind of the mute atmosphere, 

And every beast stretched in its rugged cave, 
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough, 
And every silver moth, fresh from the grave, 

Which is its cradle — ever from below 
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far, 
To be consumed within the purest glow 

Of one serene and unapproached star, 
As if it were a lamp of earthly light, 
Unconscious as some human lovers are, 

Itself how low, how high, beyond all height 

The heaven where it would perish ! — and every form 

That worshipped in the temple of the night 

Was awed into delight, and by the charm 

Girt as with an interminable zone, 

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm 

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion 
Out of their dreams ; harmony became love 
In every soul but one. . . . 



And so this man returned with axe and saw 
At evening close from killing the tall treen, 
The soul of whom by nature's gentle law 

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green 
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse, 
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene 

With jagged leaves, — and from the forest tops 
Singing the winds to sleep — or weeping oft 
Fast showers of aerial water drops 



Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, 
! Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness ; — 
Around the cradles of the birds aloft 

They spread themselves into the loveliness 

Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers 

Hang like moist clouds : or, where high branches kiss, 

Make a green space among the silent bowers, 
Like a vast fane in a metropolis, 
Surrounded by the columns and the towers 

All overwrought with branch-like traceries 
In which there is religion — and the mute 
Persuasion of unkindled melodies, 

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute 

Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast 

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute, 

Wakening the leaves and waves ere it has past 

To such brief unison as on the brain 

One tone, which never can recur, has cast, 



One accent never to return 



again. 



TO MARY 



Mary dear, that you were here 
With your brown eyes bright and clear, 
And your sweet voice, like a bird 
Singing love to its lone mate 

In the ivy bower disconsolate ; 
Voice the sweetest ever heard ! 
And your brow more * * * 
Than the * * * sky 
Of this azure Italy. 
Mary dear, come to me soon, 

1 am not well whilst thou art far ; 
As sunset to the sphered moon, 
As twilight to the western star, 
Thou, beloved, art to me. 

Mary dear, that you were here ! 
The Castle echo whispers " Here ! " 

Este, September, 1818- 



ON A FADED VIOLET. 



t 



The colour from the flower is gone, 

Which like thy sweet eyes smiled on me ; 

The odour from the flower is flown, 
Which breathed of thee and only thee ! 

A withered, lifeless, vacant form, 
It lies on my abandoned breast, 

And mocks the heart which yet is warm 
With cold and silent rest. 

I weep — my tears revive it not. 

I sigh — it breathes no more on me ; 
Its mute and uncomplaining lot 

Is such as mine should be. 



) 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



MISERY.— A FRAGMENT. 



Come, be happy ! — sit near me, 
Shadow vested Miser)- : 
Coy, unwilling, silent bride, 
Mourning in thy robe of pride, 
Desolation — deified ! 

Come, be happy ! — sit near me : 

Sad as I may seem to thee, 
I am happier far than thou, 
Lady, whose imperial brow 
Is endiademed with woe. 

Misery ! we have known each other, 
Like a sister and a brother 
Living in the same lone home, 
Many years — we must live some 
Hours or ages yet to come. 

'Tis an evil lot, and yet 

Let us make the best of it ; 

If love can live when pleasure dies, 

We two will love, till in our eyes 

This heart's Hell seem Paradise. 

Come, be happy ! — He thee down 
On the fresh grass newly mown, 
Where the grasshopper doth sing 
Merrily — one joyous thing 
In a world of sorrowing ! 

There our tent shall be the willow, 
And mine arm shall be thy pillow ; 
Sounds and odours, sorrowful 
Because they once were sweet, shall lull 
Us to slumber deep and dull. 

Ha ! thy frozen pulses flutter 
With a love thou dar'st not utter. 
Thou art murmuring — thou art weeping- 
Is thine icy bosom leaping 
While my burning heart lies sleeping 1 

Kiss me ; — oh ! thy lips are cold ; 
Round my neck thine arms enfold — 
They are soft, but chill and dead ; 
And thy tears upon my head 
Burn like points of frozen lead. 

Hasten to the bridal bed — 
Underneath the grave 'tis spread : 
In darkness may our love be hid, 
Oblivion be our coverlid — 
We may rest, and none forbid. 

Clasp me, till our hearts be grown 
Like two shadows into one ; 
Till this dreadful transport may 
Like a vapour fade away 
In the sleep that lasts alway. 

We may dream in that long sleep, 
That we are not those who weep ; 
Even as Pleasure dreams of thee, 
Life-desertins: Misery, 
Thou mayest dream of her with me. 



Let us laugh, and make our mirth, 
At the shadows of the earth, 
As dogs bay the moonlight clouds, 
Which, like spectres wrapt in shroud--, 
Pass o'er night in multitudes. 

All the wide world, beside us 
Show like multitudinous 
Puppets passing from a scene ; 
What but mockery can they mean, 
Where I am — where thou hast been ! 



STANZAS, 

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES. 

The sun is warm, the sky is clear, 

The waves are dancing fast and bright, 
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 

The purple noon's transparent light : 
The breath of the moist air is light, 

Around its unexpanded buds ; 
Like many a voice of one delight, 

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, 
The City's voice itself is solt like Solitude's. 

I see the Deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple sea-weeds strown : 
I see the waves upon the shore, 

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown : 
I sit upon the sands alone, 

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean 
Is flashing round me, and a tone 

Arises from its measured motion, 
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. 

Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, 

Nor peace within nor calm around, 
Nor that content surpassing wealth 

The sage in meditation found, 
And walked with inward glory crowned — 

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 
Others I see whom these surround — 

Smiling they five, and call life pleasure ; 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 

Yet now despair itself is mild, 

Even as the winds and waters are ; 
I could lie down like a tired child, 

And weep away the life of care 
Which I have borne, and yet must bear, 

Till death like sleep might steal on me, 
And I might feel in the warm air 

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 

Some might lament that I were cold, 

As I when this sweet day is gone, 
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, 

Insults with this untimely moan ; 
They might lament — for I am one 

Whom men love not, — and yet regret, 
Unlike this day, which, when the sun 

Shall on its stainless glory set, 
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory 

[yet. 

December, 1818. 

o 2 






POEMS WRITTEN IX 1818. 



MAZENGHI* 

of man's abandoned glory 
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour, 
Tluui sluulowvst forth that mighty shape in story, 
n its wrecked Gums, seTere yet tender: — 
The light-invested angel I 
Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee. 

Anil thou in painting didst transcribe all taught 

By loftiest meditations ; marble knew 

rioter's fearless soul — and, as he wrought, 
The grace of his own power and freedom grew. 
And more than all, heroic, just, sublime, 
Thou wort among the false— was this thy crime I 

Yes J and on Fisa's marble walls the twine 
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded— the snake 
Inhabits its wrecked palaces ; — in thine 
A beast oi subtler venom now doth make 
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown, 
And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own. 

The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare, 
And love and freedom blossom but to wither ; 
And good and ill like vines entangled are, 
So that their grapes may oft be plucked together; — 
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make 
Thy heart rejoice for dead Mazenghi's sake. 

No record of his crime remains in story, 
But if the morning bright as evening shone, 
It was some high and holy deed, by glory 
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won 
From the blind crowd he made secure and free 
The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy. 

For when by sound of trumpet was declared 
A price upon his life, and there was set 
A penalty of blood on all who shared 
So much of water with him as might wet 
His lips, which speech divided not — he went 
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment. 

Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast, 
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, 
Month after month endured ; it was a feast 
Whene'er he found those globes of deep red gold 
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, 
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. 

And in the roofless huts of vast morasses, 
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf, 
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses, 
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf, 
And where the huge and speckled aloe made, 
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade, 



* This fragment refers to an event, told in Sismondi's 
Histoire des RepuUiques Italien net, which occurred during 
the war when Florence finally suhdued Pisa, and reduced 
it to a province. The opening stanzas are addressed to the 
conquering city. — JJf. S. 



He housed himself. There is a point of strand 
Near Yada's tower and town ; and on one side 
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land, 
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide ; 
And on the other creeps eternally, 
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea. 

Naples, 1810. 



SONG FOR TASSO. 



I loved — alas ! our life is love ; 

But when we cease to breathe and move, 

I do suppose love ceases too. 

1 thought, but not as now I do, 

Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, 

Of all that men had thought before, 

And all that Nature shows, and more. 

And still I love, and still I think, 
But strangely, for my heart can drink 
The dregs of such despair, and live, 
And love ; 

And if I think, my thoughts come fast ; 
I mix the present with the past, 
And each seems uglier than the last. 

Sometimes I see before me flee 
A silver spirit's form, like thee, 
Leonora, and I sit 

] still watching it, 
Till by the grated casement's ledge 
It fades, with sueh a sigh, as sedge 
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge 



SONNET. 

Lift not the painted veil which those who live 
Call Life ; though unreal shapes be pictured 

there, 
And it but mimic all we would believe 
With colours idly spread, — behind, lurk Fear 
And Hope, twin Destinies ; who ever weave 
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and 

drear. 

I knew one who had lifted it — he sought, 
For his lost heart was tender, things to love, 
But found them not, alas ! nor was there aught 
The world contains, the which he could approve. 
Through the unheeding many he did move, 
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot 
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove 
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 1818. 



220 



NOTE OX THE POEMS OF 1818. 



BY THE EDITOR. 



Rosalixd and Helen was begun at Mario w, and 
thrown aside— till I found it ; and, at my request, 
it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of 
his poems that did not emanate from the depths of 
his mind, and develop some high or abstruse truth. 
When he does touch on human life and the human 
heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more deli- 
cate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never 
mentioned Love, but he shed a grace, borrowed 
from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet 
has bestowed, on that passion. When he spoke 
of it as the law of life, which inasmuch as we 
rebel against, we err and injure ourselves and 
others, he promulgated that which he considered 
an irrefragable truth. In his eyes it was the 
essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose 
from the war made against it by selfishness, or in- 
sensibility, or mistake. By reverting in bis mind 
to this first principle, he discovered the source of 
many emotions, and could disclose the secret of 
all hearts, and his delineations of passion and 
emotion touch the finest chords of our nature. 

Rosalind and Helen was finished during the 
summer of 1818, while we were at the Baths of 
Lucca. Thence Shelley visited Venice, and cir- 
cumstances rendering it eligible that we should 
remain a few weeks in the neighbourhood of that 
city, he accepted the offer of Lord Byron, who lent 
him the use of a villa he rented near Este ; and 
he sent for his family from Lucca to join him. 

I Capuccini was a villa built on the site of a 
Capuchin convent, demolished when the French 
suppressed religions houses ; it was situated on 
the very over-hanging brow of a low hill at the 
foot of a range of higher ones. The house was 
cheerful and pleasant ; a vine-trellised walk, a 
Pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall 
door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, 
which Shelley made his study, and in which he 
began the Prometheus ; and here also, as he men- 
tions in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo ; a 
slight ravine, with a road in its depth, divided the 
garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the 
ancient castle of Este, whose dark massive wall gave 
forth an echo, and from whose ruined crevices, owls 



and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon 
sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. 
We looked from the garden over the wide plain of 
Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apen- 
nines, while to the east, the horizon was lost in 
misty distance. After the picturesque but limited 
view of mountain, ravine, and chesnut wood at 
the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely 
gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect 
commanded by our new abode. 

Our first misfortune, of the kind from which we 
soon suffered even more severely, happened here. 
Our little girl, an infant in whose small features I 
fancied that I traced great resemblance to her 
father, showed symptoms of suffering from the 
heat of the climate. Teething increased her ill- 
ness and danger. We were at Este, and when 
we became alarmed, hastened to Venice for the 
best advice. When we arrived at Fusina, we 
found that we had forgotten our passport, and the 
soldiers on duty attempted to prevent our crossing 
the laguna ; but they could not resist Shelley's 
impetuosity at such a moment. We had scarcely 
arrived at Venice, before life fled from the little 
sufferer, and we returned to Este to weep her 
loss. 

After a few weeks spent in this retreat, which 
were interspersed by visits to Venice, we proceeded 
southward. We often hear of persons disappointed 
by a first visit to Italy. This was not Shelley's case 
— the aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its majestic 
storms ; of the luxuriant vegetation of the country, 
and the noble marble-built cities, enchanted him. 
The sight of the works of art were full enjoyment 
and wonder ; he had not studied pictures or statues 
before, he now did so with the eye of taste, that re- 
ferred not to the rules of schools, but to those of na- 
ture and truth. The first entrance to Rome opened 
to him a scene of remains of antique grandeur that 
far surpassed his expectations ; and the unspeak- 
able beauty of Naples and its environs added to 
the impression he received of the transcendant 
and glorious beauty of Italy. As I have said, he 
wrote long letters during the first year of our re- 
sidence in this country, and these, when published, 






1 hi I i. ON POEMS OF ISIS. 



will be the best testimonials of his appreciation of ' 
the harmonious ami beautiful in art ami nature, [ 
ami his del i discerning end deeeribing \ 

them *. 

Our \x inter was spent at Naples. Here he wrote 
the fragments of Bftasenghi ami the Woodman and 
the Nightingale, which he afterwards threw aside. 
At this time SheUej suffered greatly in health. He 
put himst If under the care of a medical man, who 
promised great things, and made him endure severe 
bodily pain, without any uood results. Constant 
and poignant physical suffering exhausted him; and 
though he preserved the appearance of cheerfulness, 
and often greatly enjoyed our wanderings in the en- 
virons of Naples, and our excursions on its sunny 
J et many hours were passed when his thoughts, 
shadowed by illness, became gloomy, and then he 
escaped to solitude, and in verses, which he hid 
from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid but 
too natural bursts of discontent and sadness. One 
looks back with unspeakable regret and gnawing 
remorse to such periods ; fancying that had one 
been more alive to the nature of his feelings, and 
more attentive to soothe them, such would not 
have existed — and yet enjoying, as he appeared to 
do, every sight or influence of earth or sky, it 
was difficult to imagine that any melancholy he 
showed was aught but the effect of the constant 
pain to which he was a martyr. 

We lived in utter solitude — and such is often 
not the nurse of cheerfulness ; for then, at least 
with those who have been exposed to adversity, 
the mind broods over its sorrows too intently ; 
■while the society of the enlightened, the witty, and 
the wise, enables us to forget ourselves by making 



* These letters, together with various essays, transla- 
tions, and fragments, being the greater portion of the 
pr.-ic writings left by Shelley, are now in the press.— 



us the sharers of the thoughts of others, which is 
a portion of the philosophy of happiness. Shelley 
never liked society in numbers, it harassed and 
wearied him ; but neither did he like loneliness, 
and usually when alone sheltered himself against 
memory and reflection, in a book. But with one 
or two whom he loved, he gave way to wild and 
joyous spirits, or in more serious conversation ex- 
pounded his opinions with vivacity and eloquence. 
If an argument arose, no man ever argued better 
— he was clear, logical, and earnest, in supporting 
his own views ; attentive, patient, and impartial, 
while listening to those on the adverse side. Had 
not a wall of prejudice been raised at this time 
between him and his countrymen, how many 
would have sought the acquaintance of one, whom 
to know was to love and to revere ! how many of 
the more enlightened of his contemporaries have 
since regretted that they did not seek him ! how 
very few knew his worth while he lived, and of 
those few, several were withheld by timidity or 
envy from declaring their sense of it. But no man 
was ever more enthusiastically loved — more looked 
up to as one superior to his fellows in intellectual 
endowments and moral worth, by the few who 
knew him well, and had sufficient nobleness of 
soul to appreciate his superiority. His excellence 
is now acknowledged ; but even while admitted, 
not duly appreciated. For who, except those who 
were acquainted with him, can imagine his un- 
wearied benevolence, his generosity, his systematic 
forbearance? And still less is his vast superiority in 
intellectual attainments sufficiently understood — > 
his sagacity, his clear understanding, his learning, 
his prodigious memory ; all these, as displayed in 
conversation, were known to few while he lived, and 
are now silent in the tomb : 

Ahi orbo mondo ingrato, 

Gran cagion hai di dever pianger meeo. 

Che quel ben ch' era in te, perdut' hai seco. 



POEMS WRITTEN IX MDCCCXIX 



THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY 



As I lay asleep in Italy, 
There came a voice from over the sea, 
And with great power it forth led me 
To walk in the visions of Poesy. 



I met Murder on the way — 
He had a mask like Castlereagh — 
Very smooth he looked, yet grim ; 
Seven bloodhounds followed him : 



All were fat ; and well they might 

Be in admirable plight, 

For one by one, and two by two, 

He tossed them human hearts to chew, 

Which from his wide cloak he drew. 



>"rx: came Fraud, and he had on, 

Like Lord E , an ermine gown 

His big tears, for he wept well, 
Turned to mill -stones as they fell ; 



And the little children, who 

Round his feet played to and fro, 

Thinking every tear a gem, 

Had their brains knocked out bv them. 



And he wore a kingly crown ; 
In his hand a sceptre shone ; 
On his brow this mark I saw- 



With a pace stately and fast, 
Over English land he past, 
Trampling to a mire of blood 
The adoring multitude. 



And a mighty troop around, 

With their trampling shook the ground, 

Waving each a bloody sword, 

For the service of their Lord. 



And, with glorious triumph, they 
Rode-through England, proud and gay, 
Drunk as with intoxication 
Of the wine of desolation. 



O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea, 
Passed the pageant swift and free, 
Tearing up, and trampling down, 
Till they came to London town. 



Clothed with the bible as with light, 
And the shadow of the night, 
Like S * * * next, Hypocrisy. 
On a crocodile came by. 



And each dweller, panic-stricken, 
Felt his heart with terror sicken, 
Hearing the tremendous cry 
Of the triumph of Anarchy. 



And many more Destructions played 
In this ghastly masquerade. 
All disguised, even to the eyes, 
Like bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies. 



last came Anarchy ; he rode 

On a white horse splashed with blood ; 

He was pale even to the lips, 

Like Death in the Apocalypse. 



For with pomp to meet him came, 
Clothed in arms like blood and flame, 
The hired murderers who did sing, 
Thou art God, and Law, and King. 



" We have waited, weak and lone, 
For thy coming, Mighty One ! 
Our purses are empty, our swords are cold. 
Give us glory, and blood, and gold." 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



XVII. 

Lawyers and priests, ■ motley crowd, 

T.> the earth their pale brows bowed, 

i bad pnjer not over loud, 
Whispering — * Thou art Law and God 



Then all rated with one accord, 
• Thou art King, and Law, and Lord ; 
Anarchy, to thee wo bow. 

Be thy name made holy now ! ' 



And Anarchy, the skeleton, 
Bowed and grinned to every one, 

1 as if his education 
Had cost ten millions to the nation. 



For he knew the palaces 
Of our kings were nightly his ; 
His the sceptre, crown, and globe, 
And the gold-inwoven robe. 



So he sent his slaves before 
To seize upon the Bank and Tower, 
And was proceeding with intent 
To meet his pensioned parliament, 



When one fled past, a maniac maid, 
And her name was Hope, she said : 
But she looked more like Despair ; 
And she cried out in the air : 



xxm. 
■ My father, Time is weak and grey 
AVith waiting for a better day ; 
See how idiot-like he stands, 
Trembling with his palsied hands ! 

XXIV. 

" He has had child after child, 
And the dust of death is piled 
Over every one but me — 
Misery ! oh, Misery ! " 



Then she lay down in the street, 
Right before the horses' feet, 
Expecting with a patient eye, 
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy. 

XXVT. 

When between her and her foes 
A mist, a light, an image rose, 
Small at first, and weak and frail 
Like the vapour of the vale : 

XXVII. 

Till as clouds grow on the blast, 
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast. 
And glare with lightnings as they fly, 
And speak in thunder to the sky, 



It grew — a shape arrayed in mail 
Brighter than the viper's scale, 
And upborne on wings whose grain 
Was like the light of sunny ram. 



XXIX. 

On its helm, seen far away, 

A planet, like the morning's, lay : 

And those plumes it light rained through, 

Like a shower of crimson dew. 



With step as soft as wind it passed 
O'er the heads of men — so fast 

That they knew the presence there, 
And looked — and all was empty air. 

XXXI. 

As flowers beneath May's footsteps waken, 
As stars from night's loose hair are shaken, 
As waves arise when loud winds call, 
Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall. 



And the prostrate multitude 
Looked — and ankle-deep in blood, 
Hope, that maiden most serene, 
Was walking with a quiet mien : 



And Anarchy, the ghastly birth, 

Lay dead earth upon the earth ; 

The Horse of Death, tameless as wind, 

Fled, and with his hoofs did grind 

To dust the murderers thronged behind. 



A rushing light of clouds and splendour, 
A sense, awakening and yet tender, 
Was heard and felt — and at its close 
These words of joy and fear arose : 



As if their own indignant earth, 
Which gave the sons of England birth, 
Had felt their blood upon her brow, 
And shuddering with a mother's throe, 



Had turned every drop of blood, 

By which her face had been bedewed, 

To an accent unwithstood, 

As if her heart had cried aloud : 

xxxvn. 
" Men of England, Heirs of Glory, 
Heroes of unwritten story, 
Nurslings of one mighty mother, 
Hopes of her, and one another ! 

xxxvm. 
" Rise, like lions after slumber, 
In unvanquishable number, 
Shake your chains to earth like dew, 
Which in sleep had fall'n on you, 
Ye are many, they are few. 



THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 



233 



XXXIX. 

" What is Freedom 1 Ye can tell 
That which Slavery is too well, 
For its very name has grown 
To an echo of your own. 



" 'Tis to work, and have such pay 
As just keeps life from day to day 
In your limbs as in a cell 
For the tyrants' use to dwell : 



" So that ye for them are made, 
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade ; 
With or without your own will, bent 
To their defence and nourishment. 



" 'Tis to see your children weak 
With their mothers pine and peak, 
When the winter winds are bleak :■ 
They are dying whilst I speak. 

XLIU. 

" 'Tis to hunger for such diet, 
As the rich man in his riot 
Casts to the fat dogs that lie 
Surfeiting beneath his eye. 



" 'Tis to let the Ghost of Gold 
Take from toil a thousand-fold 
More than e'er its substance could 
In the tyrannies of old : 



" Paper coin — that forgery 
Of the title deeds, which ye 
Hold to something of the worth 
Of the inheritance of Earth. 

XLVI. 

" 'Tis to be a slave in soul, 
And to hold no strong controul 
Over your own wills, but be 
All that others make of ye. 



" And at length when ye complain, 
With a murmur weak and vain, 
'Tis to see the tyrant's crew 
Ride over your wives and you : — 
Blood is on the grass like dew ! 



" Then it is to feel revenge, 
Fiercely thirsting to exchange 
Blood for blood — and wrong for wrong 
Do not thus when ye are strong ! 

XLIX. 

u Birds find rest in narrow nest, 
When weary of their winged quest ; 
Beasts find fare in woody lair, 
When storm and snow are in the air. 



Horses, oxen, have a home, 
When from daily toil they come ; 
Household dogs, when the wind roars, 
Find a home within warm doors. 



Asses, swine, have litter spread, 
And with fitting food are fed • 
All things have a home but one : 
Thou, Englishman, hast none ! 



" This is slavery — savage men, 
Or wild beasts within a den, 
Would endure not as ye do : 
But such ills they never knew. 



" What art thou, Freedom ? Oh ! could slaves 
Answer from their living graves 
This demand, tyrants would flee 
Like a dream's dim imagery. 



" Thou art not, as impostors say, 
A shadow soon to pass away, 
A superstition, and a name 
Echoing from the cave of Fame. 



" For the labourer thou art bread 
And a comely table spread, 
From his daily labour come, 
In a neat and happy home. 



ft Thou art clothes, and fire, and food 
For the trampled multitude : 
No — in countries that are free 
Such starvation cannot be, 
As in England now we see. 



To the rich thou art a check ; 
When his foot is on the neck 
Of his victim, thou dost make 
That he treads upon a snake. 



" Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold 
May thy righteous laws be sold, 
As laws are in England : — thou 
Shieldest alike the high and low. 



Thou art Wisdom— freemen never 
Dream that God will doom for ever 
All who think those things untrue, 
Of which priests make such ado. 



" Thou art Peace — never by thee 
Would blood and treasure wasted be, 
As tyrants wasted them, when all 
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul. 



as i 



POEMS WKITTKN IN 1819. 



What if English toil and blood 

Was poured forth, even as a flood? 

It availed,— o Liberty ! 

To dim- but not extinguish thee. 



" Thou art Lovo — the rich have kist 
Thy foot ; and like him following Christ, 
(liven their substance to the free, 
And through the rough world followed thee. 



" Oh turn their wealth to arms, and make 
War for thy beloved sake, 
On wealth and war and fraud ; whence they 
Drew the power which is their prey. 



« Science, and Poetry, and Thought, 
Are thy lamps ; they make the lot 
Of the dwellers in a cot 
Such, they curse their maker not. 



" Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, 
All that can adorn and bless, 
Art thou : let deeds, not words, express 
Thine exceeding loveliness. 

LXYI. 

" Let a great assembly be 
Of the fearless and the free, 
On some spot of English ground, 
Where the plains stretch wide around. 



" Let the blue sky overhead, 
The green earth on which ye tread, 
All that must eternal be, 
Witness the solemnity. 



LXVIII. 

" From the corners uttermost 
Of the bounds of English coast ; 
From every hut, village, and town, 
Where those who live and suffer, moan 
For others' misery, or their own : 



" From the workhouse and the prison, 
Where pale as corpses newly risen, 
Women, children, young, and old, 
Groan for pain, and weep for cold ; 



" From the haunts of daily life, 
Where is waged the daily strife 
With common wants and common cares, 
Which sow the human heart with tares. 



LXXI. 

Lastly, from the palaces, 
Where the murmur of distress 
Echoes, like the distant sound 
Of a wind, alive around ; 



" Those prison-halls of wealth and fashion, 
Where some few feel such compassion 
For those who groan, and toil, and wail, 
As must make their brethren pale ; 



" Ye who suffer woes untold, 
Or to feel, or to behold 
Your lost country bought and sold 
With a price of blood and gold. 



" Let a vast assembly be, 
And with great solemnity 
Declare with ne'er said words, that ye 
Are, as God has made ye, free. 



" Be your strong and simple words 
Keen to wound as sharpened swords, 
And wide as targes let them be, 
With their shade to cover ye. 



" Let the tyrants pour around 
With a quick and startling sound, 
Like the loosening of a sea, 
Troops of armed emblazonry. 

txxvir. 
" Let the charged artillery drive, 
Till the dead air seems alive 
With the clash of clanging wheels, 
And the tramp of horses' heels. 



Let the fixed bayonet 
Gleam with sharp desire to wet 
Its bright point in English blood, 
Looking keen as one for food. 



" Let the horsemen's scimitars 
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars, 
Thirsting to eclipse their burning 
In a sea of death and mourning. 



" Stand ye calm and resolute, 
Like a forest close and mute, 
With folded arms, and looks which are 
Weapons of an unvanquished war. 



" And let Panic, who outspeeds 
The career of armed steeds, 
Pass, a disregarded shade, 
Through your phalanx undismayed. 



Let the laws of your own land, 
Good or ill, between ye stand, 
Hand to hand, and foot to foot, 
Arbiters of the dispute. 



THR MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 



23ft 



Lxxxur. 
'* The old laws of England — they 
Whose reverend heads with age are grey, 
Children of a wiser day ; 
And whose solemn voice must be 
Thine own echo — Liberty ! 

LXXXIV. 

" On those who first should violate 
Such sacred heralds in their Btftte, 
Rest the blood that must ensue ; 
And it will not rest on you. 



■ And if then the tyrants dare, 
Let them ride among you there ; 
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew 
"What they like, that let them do. 



" With folded arms and steady eyes, 
And little fear, and less surprise, 
Look upon them as they slay, 
Till their rage has died away : 



" Then they will return with shame, 
To the place from which they came, 
And the blood thus shed will speak 
In hot blushes on their cheek : 



LXXA.VI11. 



rt Every woman in the land 
Will point at them as they stand — 
They will hardly dare to greet 
Their acquaintance in the street : 



LXXXIX. 

** And the bold true warriors, 
Who have hugged danger in the wars, 
Will turn to those who would be free, 
Ashamed of such base company : 



" And that slaughter to the nation 
Shall steam up like inspiration, 
Eloquent, oracular, 
A volcano heard afar : 



" And these words shall then become 
Like Oppression's thundered doom, 
Ringing through each heart and brain, 
Heard again — again — again ! 



" Rise, like lions after slumber 
In unvanquishable number ! 
Shake your chains to earth, like dew 
Which in sleep had fallen on you : 
Ye are many — they are few ! " 



236 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



MICHING MALLECHO, ESQ. 



Is it a party in a parlour, 

Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, 
Some sipping punch — some sipping tea , 
But, as you by their faces see, 

All silent, and all damned .' 

Peter Bell, by W. Wordsworth. 



OPHELIA. 
HAMLET.- 



-What means this, my lord ? 
-Marry, this is Miching Mallecho ; 



it means mischief. 
Shakspeare. 



DEDICATION. 



TO THOMAS BROWN, ESQ., THE YOUNGER, H.F. 



Dear Tom, 

Allow me to request you to introduce 
Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges; 
although he may fall short of those very considerable 
personages in the more active properties which charac- 
terize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even 
you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them 
in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of in- 
tolerable dulness. 

You know Mr. Examiner Hunt ; well — it was he 
who presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. My in- 
timacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung 
from this introduction to his brothers. And in pre- 
senting him to you, I have the satisfaction of being 
able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest 
of the three. 

There is this particular advantage in an acquaintance 
with any one of the Peter Bells, that if you know one 
Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells; they are not 
one, but three ; not three, but one. An awful mystery, 
which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having 
been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of 
the spheres, is at length illustrated to the satisfaction 
of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of 
Mr. Peter Bell. 



Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many 
sides. He changes colours like a cioneleon, and his 
coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He 
was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound ; 
then dull ; then prosy and dull ; and now dull — O, so 
very dull ! it is an ultra-legitimate duhiess. 

You will perceive that it is not necessary to consider 
Hell and the Devil as supernatural machinery. The 
whole scene of my epic is in " this world which is " 
— So Peter informed us before his conversion to 

White Obi 

The world of all of us, and where 

We find our happiness, or not at all. 

Let me observe that I have spent six or seven days 
in composing this sublime piece; the orb of my moon- 
like genius has made the fourth part of its revolution 
round the dull earth which you inhabit, driving you 
mad, while it has retained its calmness and its splen- 
dour, and I have been fitting this its last phase " to 
occupy a permanent station in the literature of my 
country." 

Your works, indeed, dear Tom, sell better; but 
mine ai e far superior. The public is no judge ; posterity 
sets all to rights. 

Allow me to observe that so much has been written 
of Peter Bell, that the present history can be considered 
only, like the Iliad, as a continuation of that series of 
cyclic poems, which have already been candidates for 
bestowing immortality upon, at the same time that 
they receive it from, his character and adventures. Iu 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



237 



this point of view, I have violated no rule of syntax 
in beginning my composition with a conjunction ; the 
full stop which closes the poem continued by me, being, 
like the full stops at the end of the Iliad and Odyssey, 
a full stop of a very qualified import. 

Hoping that the immortality which you have given 
to the Fudges, you will receive from them ; and in 
the firm expectation, that when London shall be an 
habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul's and Westminster 
Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in 
the midst of an unpeopled marsh ; when the piers of 
Waterloo-Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of 
reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their 



broken arches on the solitary stream, some transatlantic 
commentator will be -weighing in the scales of some 
new and now unimagined system of criticism, the 
respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and 
their historians, 

I remain, dear Tom, 

Yours sincerely 

MlCHING MALLECHO. 

December 1, 1819. 

P.S. — Pray excuse the date of place ; so soon as the 
profits of the publication come in, I mean to hire 
lodgings in a more respectable street. 



CONTENTS 



Prologue. 
Death. 
The Devil. 



IIell. 

Sin. 
Grace. 



Damnation. 
Double Damnation, 



PROLOGUE. 



Peter Bells, one, two and three, 

O'er the wide world wandering be. — 

First, the antenatal Peter, 

Wrapt in weeds of the same metre, 

The so long predestined raiment 

Clothed, in which to walk his way meant 

The second Peter ; whose ambition 

Is to link the proposition, 

As the mean of two extremes — 

(This was learnt from Aldric's themes) 

Shielding from the guilt of schism 

The orthodoxal syllogism ; 

The First Peter — he who was 

Like the shadow in the glass 

Of the second, yet unripe, 

His substantial antitype. — 

Then came Peter Bell the Second, 

Who henceforward must be recktmed 

The body of a double soul, 

And that portion of the whole 

Without which the rest would seem 

Ends of a disjointed dream — 

And the Third is he who has 

O'er the grave been forced to pass 



To the other side, which is, — 
Go and try else, — just like this. 

Peter Bell the First was Peter 
Smugger, milder, softer, neater, 
Like the soul before it is 
Born from that world into this. 
The next Peter Bell was he, 
Predevote, like you and me, 
To good or evil as may come ; 
His was the severer doom, — 
For he was an evil Cotter, 
And a polygamic Potter.* 
And the last is Peter Bell, 
Damned since our first parents fell, 
Damned eternally to Hell — 
Surely he deserves it well ! 

* The oldest scholiasts read— 

A dodecagamic Potter. 

This is at once more descriptive and more megalophonous, 
— but the alliteration of the text had captivated the 
vulgar ear of the herd of later commentators. 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 1810. 



n 



PART THE FIRST. 



And Peter Bell, when he had been 
With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed. 

Grow serious — from his dress and mien 

Twas very plainly to be seen 
Peter was quite reformed. 

His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down 
His accent caught a nasal twang ; 

He oiled his hair,* there might be heard 

The grace of God in every word 
Which Peter said or sang. 

But Peter now grew old, and had 
An ill no doctor could unravel ; 

His torments almost drove him mad ; — 

Some said it was a fever bad — 
Some swore it was the gravel. 

His holy friends then came about, 

And with long preaching and persuasion, 

Convinced the patient that, without 

The smallest shadow of a doubt, 
He was predestined to damnation. 

They said — " Thy name is Peter Bell ; 

Thy skin is of a brimstone hue ; 
Alive or dead — aye, sick or well — 
The one God made to rhyme with hell ; 

The other, I think, rhymes with you." 

Then Peter set up such a yell ! — 

The nurse, who with some water gruel 
Was climbing up the stairs, as well 
As her old legs could climb them — fell, 
And broke them both — the fall was cruel. 

The Parson from the casement leapt 

Into the lake of Windermere — 
And many an eel — though no adept 
In God's right reason for it — kept 
Gnawing his kidneys half a year. 



* To those who have not duly appreciated the distinction 
between Whale and Russia oil, this attribute might rather 
seem to belong to the Dandy than the Evangelic. The 
effect, when to the windward, is indeed so similar, that it 
requires a subtle naturalist to discriminate the animals. 
They belong, however, to distinct genera. 



And all the rest rushed through the door, 

And tumbled over one another, 
And broke their skulls. — Upon the floor 
Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore, 
And cursed his father and his mother ; 

And raved of God, and sin, and death, 

Blaspheming like an infidel ; 
And said, that with his clenched teeth, 
He'd seize the earth from underneath., 

And drag it with him down to hell. 

As he was speaking came a spasm, 

And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder 
Like one who sees a strange phantasm 
He lay, — there was a silent chasm 
Between his upper jaw and under. 

And yellow death lay on his face ; 

And a fixed smile that was not human 
Told, as I understand the case, 
That he was gone to the wrong place : — 

I heard all this from the old woman. 

Then there came down from Langdale Pike 
A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail ; 

It swept over the mountains like 

An ocean, — and I heard it strike 

The woods and crags of Grasmere vale. 

And I saw the black storm come 

Nearer, minute after minute ; 
Its thunder made the cataracts dumb ; 
With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum, 

It neared as if the Devil was in it. 

The Devil was in it : — he had bought 
Peter for half-a-crown ; and when 
The storm which bore him vanished, nought 
That in the house that storm had caught 
Was ever seen again. 

The gaping neighbours came next day — 

They found all vanished from the shore : 
The Bible, whence he used to pray, 
Half scorched under a hen-coop lay ; 
Smashed glass — and nothing more ! 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



230 



TART THE SECOND. 

GTJje IBM. 



The Devil, I safely can aver, 

Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting 
Nor is he, as some sages swear, 
A spirit, neither here nor there, 
In nothing — yet in everything. 



He is — what we are ; for sometimes 

The Devil is a gentleman ; 
At others a bard bartering rhymes 
For sack ; a statesman spinning crimes ; 

A swindler, living as he can ; 



A thief, who cometh in the night, 

With whole boots and net pantaloons, 
Like some one whom it were not right 
To mention ; — or the luckless wight, 

From whom he steals nine silver spoons. 



But in this case he did appear 

Like a slop-merchant from Wapping, 
And with smug face, and eye severe, 
On every side did perk and peer 
Till he saw Peter dead or napping. 



He had on an upper Benjamin 

(For he was of the driving schism) 
In the which he wrapt his skin 
From the storm he travelled in, 
For fear of rheumatism. 



He called the ghost out of the corse ; — 

It was exceedingly like Peter, — 
Only its voice was hollow and hoarse — 
It had a queerish look of course — 
Its dress too was a little neater. 



The Devil knew not his name and lot ; 

Peter knew not that he was Bell : 
Each had an upper stream of thought, 
Which made all seem as it was not ; 

Fitting itself to all things well. 



Peter thought he had parents dear, 
Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies, 

In the fens of Lincolnshire ; 

He perhaps had found them there 
Had he gone and boldly shown his 



Solemn phiz in his own village ; 

Where he thought oft when a boy 
He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage 
The produce of his neighbour's tillage, 

With marvellous pride and joy. 



And the Devil thought he had, 

'Mid the misery and confusion 
Of an unjust war, just made 
A fortune by the gainful trade 
Of giving soldiers rations bad — 

The world is full of strange delusion. 

That he had a mansion planned 

In a square like Grosvenor-square, 
That he was aping fashion, and 
That he now came to Westmorland 
To see what was romantic there. 



And all this, though quite ideal, — 
Ready at a breath to vanish, — 
Was a state not more unreal 
Than the peace he could not feel, 
Or the care he could not banish. 



After a little conversation, 

The Devil told Peter, if he chose, 

He'd bring him to the world of fashion 

By giving him a situation 

In his own service — and new clothes^ 



And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud, 
And after waiting some few days 

For a new livery — dirty yellow 

Turned up with black — the wretched fellow 
Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise. 



840 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



PART THE THIRD. 

ma. 



IIf.i.l is a city much like London — 

A populous and a smoky city ; 
There arc all sorts of people undone, 
And there is little or no fun done ; 

Small justice shown, and still less pity. 

There is a Castles, and a Canning, 

A Cohbett, and a Custlereagh ; 
All sorts of caitiff corpses planning, 
All sorts of cozening for trepanning 

Corpses less corrupt than they. 

There is a * * *, who has lost 

His wits, or sold them, none knows which ; 
He walks about a double ghost, 
And though as thin as Fraud almost — 

Ever grows more grim and rich. 

There is a Chancery Court ; a King ; 

A manufacturing mob ; a set 
Of thieves who by themselves are sent 
Similar thieves to represent ; 

An army ; and a public debt. 

Which last is a scheme of paper money, 

And means — being interpreted — 
Bees, " keep your wax — give us the honey, 
And we will plant, while skies are sunny, 
Flowers, which in winter serve instead." 

There is great talk of revolution — 

And a great chance of despotism — 
German soldiers — camps — confusion — 
Tumults — lotteries — rage — delusion — 
Gin — suicide — and methodism. 

Taxes too, on wine and bread, 

And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,, 
From which those patriots pure are fed, 
Who gorge before they reel to bed 

The tenfold essence of all these. 

There are mincing women, mewing, 

(Like cats, who amant misere,*) 
Of their own virtue, and pursuing 
Their gentler sisters to that ruin, 

Without which — what were chastity .+ 

* One of the attributes in Linnseus's description of the 
Cat. To a similar cause the caterwauling of more than 
one species of this genus is to be referred ; — except, indeed, 
that the poor quadruped is compelled to quarrel with its 
own pleasures, whilst the biped is supposed only to quarrel 
with those of others. 

t What would this husk and excuse for a virtue be 



Lawyers — judges — old hobnobbers 

Are there — bailiffs — chancellors — 
Bishops — great and little robbers — 
Rhymesters — pamphleteers — stock-jobbers — 
Men of glory in the wars, — 

Things whose trade is, over ladies 

To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper, 
Till all that is divine in woman 
Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, 
Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper. 

Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling, 

Frowning, preaching — such a riot ! 
Each with never-ceasing labour, 
Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour, 
Cheating his own heart of quiet. 

And all these meet at levees ; — 

Dinners convivial and political ; — 
Suppers of epic poets ; — teas, 
Where small talk dies in agonies ; — 
Breakfasts professional and critical ; 

Lunches and snacks so aldermanic 

That one would furnish forth ten dinners, 
Where reigns a Cretan-tongued panic, 
Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic 

Should make some losers, and some winners 

At conversazioni — balls — 

Conventicles — and drawing-rooms — 
Courts of law— committees — calls 
Of a morning — clubs — book-stalls — 

Churches — masquerades — and tombs. 

And this is Hell — and in this smother 

All are damnable and damned ; 
Each one damning, damns the other ; 
They are damned by one another, 

By none other are they damned.. 

'Tis a lie to say, " God damns ! " * 

W r here was Heaven's Attorney General 

When they first gave out such flams ? 

Let there be an end of shams, 

They are mines of poisonous mineral. 

without its kernel prostitution, or the kernel prostitution 
without this husk of a virtue ? I wonder the women ol 
the town do not form an association, like the Society for 
the Suppression of Vice, for the support of what may be 
called the "King, Church, and Constitution" of their 
order. But this subject is almost too horrible for a joke. 
* This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of 



PETER BELL THE THIRD. 



241 



Statesmen damn themselves to be 

Cursed ; and lawyers damn their souls 
To the auction of a fee ; 
Churchmen damn themselves to see 
- God's sweet love in burning coals. 

The rich are damned, beyond all cure, 
To taunt, and starve, and trample on 
The weak and wretched ; and the poor 
Damn their broken hearts to endure 
Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan. 

Sometimes the poor are damned indeed 

To take, — not means for being blest, — 
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge ; that weed 
From which the worms that it doth feed 
Squeeze less than they before possessed. 

And some few, like we know who, 

Damned — but God alone knows why — 
To believe their minds are given 
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven ; 
In which faith they live and die. 



Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken, 
Each man be he sound or no 

Must indifferently sicken ; 

As when day begins to thicken, 
None knows a pigeon from a crow, 



So good and bad, sane and mad, 

The oppressor and the oppressed ; 
Those who weep to see what others 
Smile to inflict upon their brothers ; 
Lovers, haters, worst and best ; 



All are damned — they breathe an air, 

Thick, infected, joy-dispelling : 
Each pursues what seems most fair, 
Mining like moles, through mind, and there 
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care 
In throned state is ever dwelling. 



PART THE FOURTH. 

Sbm. 



Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor-square, 

A footman in the devil's service ! 
And the misjudging world would swear 
That every man in service there 

To virtue would prefer vice. 

But Peter, though now damned, was not 

What Peter was before damnation. 
Men oftentimes prepare a lot 
Which ere it finds them, is not what 
Suits with their genuine station. 

All things that Peter saw and felt 

Had a peculiar aspect to him ; 
And when they came within the belt 
Of his own nature, seemed to melt, 

Like cloud to cloud, into him. 

And so the outward world uniting 

To that within him, he became 
Considerably uninviting 
To those, who meditation slighting, 

Were moulded in a different frame. 

And he scorned them, and they scorned him ; 

And he scorned all they did ; and they 
Did all that men of their own trim 
Are wont to do to please their whim, 

Drinking, lying, swearing, play. 

all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of 
solemnly asseverating the most enormous falsehood, I fear 
deserves the notice of a more active Attorney General than 
that here alluded to. 



Such were his fellow-servants ; thus 
His virtue, like our own, was built 
Too much on that indignant fuss 
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us 
To bully out another's guilt. 

He had a mind which was somehow 
At once circumference and centre 

Of all he might or feel or know ; 

Nothing went ever out, although 
Something did ever enter. 

He had as much imagination 
As a pint-pot ; — he never could 

Fancy another situation, 

From which to dart his contemplation, 
Than that wherein he stood. 

Yet his was individual mind, 

And new created all he saw 
In a new manner, and refined 
Those new creations, and combined 
Them, by a master-spirit's law. 

Thus — though unimaginative — 

An apprehension clear, intense, 
Of his mind's work, had made alive 
The things it wrought on ; I believe 
Wakening a sort of thought in sense. 

But from the first 'twas Peter's drift 

To be a kind of moral eunuch, 
He touched the hem of nature's shift, 
Felt faint — and never dared uplift 
The closest, all-concealing tunic. 



242 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



She laughed the while, with an arch smile, 

Ami naaed him with a sister's kiss. 
Ami saivl — u My beet Diogenes, 
I Lore you well — but, if you please, 
Tempt not ■gain my deepest Miss. 

jrou are oold — for I, not coy. 

Yield love fox love, frank, warm and true 
Ami Bums, ■ Scottish peasant boy — 

His errors prove it — knew my joy 
More, learned friend, than you. 



" Bocca bacciata noit pcrdc Ventura 
Antri ritinitova come fa la luna: — 

So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might 

cure a 
Male prude, like you, from what you now 

endure, a 
Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna." 



Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe, 

And smoothed his spacious forehead down, 
With his broad palm ; — 'twixt love and fear, 
He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer. 
And in his dream sate down. 



The Devil was no uncommon creature ; 

A leaden- witted thief — just huddled 
Out of the dross and scum of nature ; 
A toad-like lump of limb and feature, 

With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled. 



Ho was that heavy, dull, cold thing, 

The spirit of evil well may be : 
A drone too base to have a sting ; 
Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing, 

And calls lust, luxury. 

Now he was quite the kind of wight 

Round whom collect, at a fixed sera, 
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret, — 
Good cheer — and those who come to share it- 
And best East Indian madeira ! 

It was his fancy to invite 

Men of science, wit, and learning, 

Who came to lend each other light ; 

He proudly thought that his gold's might 
Had set those spirits burning. 

And men of learning, science, wit, 

Considered him as you and I 
Think of some rotten tree, and sit 
Lounging and dining under it, 

Exposed to the wide sky. 

And all the while, with loose fat smile, 

The willing wretch sat winking there, 
Believing 'twas his power that made 
That jovial scene — and that all paid 
Homage to his unnoticed chair. 

Though to be sure this place was Hell ; 

He was the Devil — and all they — 
What though the claret circled well, 
And wit, like ocean, rose and fell ? — 

Were damned eternally. 



PART THE FIFTH, 



Among the guests who often staid 

Till the Devil's petits-soupers, 
A man there came, fair as a maid, 
And Peter noted what he said, 

Standing behind his master's chair. 

He was a mighty poet — and 

A subtle-souled psychologist ; 
All things he seemed to understand, 
Of old or new — of sea or land — 

But his own mind — which was a mist. 

This was a man who might have turned 
Hell into Heaven — and so in gladness 

A Heaven unto himself have earned ; 

But he in shadows undiscerned 

Trusted, — and damned himself to madness. 

He spoke of poetry, and how 
u Divine it was — a light — a love — 

A spirit which like wind doth blow 

As it listeth, to and fro ; 

A dew rained down from God above. 



" A power which comes and goes like dream, 

And which none can ever trace — [beam." 
Heaven's light on earth — Truth's brightest 
And when he ceased there lay the gleam 
Of those words upon his face. 

Now Peter, when he heard such talk, 
Would, heedless of a broken pate, 
Stand like a man asleep, or baulk 
Some wishing guest of knife or fork, 
Or drop and break his master's plate. 

At night he oft would start and wake 

Like a lover, and began 
In a wild measure songs to make 
On moor, and glen, and rocky lake, 

And on the heart of man. 

And on the universal sky — 

And the wide earth's bosom green, — 
And the sweet, strange mystery 
Of what beyond these things may lie, 
And yet remain unseen. 



PETER BELL T1IK THIRD. 



243 



For in his thought he visited 


Like gentle rains, on the dry plains, 


The spots in which, ere dead and damned, 


Making that green which late was grey, 


He his wayward life had led ; 


Or like the sudden moon, that stains 


Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed, 


Some gloomy chamber's window panes 


Which thus his fancy crammed. 


With a broad light like day. 


And these ohscure remembrances 




Stirred such harmony in Peter, 


For language was in Peter's hand, 


That whensoever he should please, 


Like clay, while he was yet a potter ; 


He could speak of rocks and trees 


And he made songs for all the land, 


In poetic metre. 


Sweet both to feel and understand, 




As pipkins late to mountain Cotter. 


For though it was without a sense 




Of memory, yet he remembered well 




Many a ditch and quick-set fence ; 
Of lakes he had intelligence, 


A»-»H A/lv* 4-l-n-v 1 .i-vnlrn/%1 In- 


Gave twenty pounds for some ; — then 


He knew something of heath, and fell. 


scorning 




A footman's yellow coat to wear, 


He had also dim recollections 


Peter, too proud of heart, I fear, 


Of pedlars tramping on their rounds ; 


Instantly gave the Devil warning. 


Milk-pans and pails ; and odd collections 




Of saws, and proverbs ; and reflections 




Old parsons make in burying-grounds. 


Whereat the Devil took offence, 




And swore in his soul a great oath then, 


But Peter's verse was clear, and came 


" That for his damned impertinence, 


Announcing from the frozen hearth 


He'd bring him to a proper sense 


Of a cold age, that none might tame 


Of what was due to gentlemen ! " — 


The soul of that diviner flame 




It augured to the Earth. 





PART THE SIXTH. 

damnation. 



" O that mine enemy had written 

A book ! " — cried Job : — a fearful curse ; 

If to the Arab, as the Briton, 

! Twas galling to be critic-bitten : — 
The Devil to Peter wished no worse. 

When Peter's next new book found vent, 

The Devil to all the first Reviews 
A copy of it slily sent, 
With five-pound note as compliment, 

And this short notice — " Pray abuse." 

Then seriatim, month and quarter, 

Appeared such mad tirades. — One said — 
" Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter, 
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater, 
The last thing as he went to bed." 

Another — " Let him shave his head ! 

Where's Dr. Willis ?— Or is he joking ? 
What does the rascal mean or hope, 
No longer imitating Pope, 

In that barbarian Shakspeare poking ?" 

One more, " Is incest not enough ? 

And must there be adultery too ? 
( 7 race after meat 1 Miscreant and Liar ! 
Thief! Blackguard !■ Scoundrel! Fool ! Hell-fire 

Is twenty times too good for you. 



" By that last book of yours we think 

You've double damned yourself to scorn ; 
We warned you whilst yet on the brink 
You stood. From your black name will shrink 
The babe that is unborn." 

All these Reviews the Devil made 

Up in a parcel, which he had 
Safely to Peter's house conveyed. 
For carriage, ten-pence Peter paid — 

Untied them — read them — went half mad. 

" What ! " cried he, " this is my reward 

For nights of thought, and days of toil ? 
Do poets, but to be abhorred 
By men of whom they never heard, 
Consume their spirits' oil ? 

" What have I done to them % — and who 

Is Mrs. Foy ? 'Tis very cruel 
To speak of me and Emma so ! 
Adultery ! God defend me ! Oh ! 

I've half a mind to fight a duel. 

" Or," cried he, a grave look collecting, 

" Is it my genius, like the moon, 
Sets those who stand her face inspecting, 
That face within their brain reflecting, 
Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune I n 



Hi 



POEMS WKITTKN IN 1819. 



For Peter did not know the town. 

But thought, m country readers do, 
For halt' a guinea or ■ crown, 
\lc bought oblivion or renown 

From God's own voieo* in a review. 
All Peter did on this occasion 

Was, writing some sad stuff in prose. 

It is a dangerous invasion 
When poets eritieise ; their station 
Is to delight, not pose. 

The Devil then sent to Leipsio fair, 

For Pom's translation of Kant's book ; 
A world of words, tail foremost, where 

Right — wrong— false — true — andfoul — and fair, 

As in a lottery-wheel are shook. 

Five thousand crammed octavo pages 
Of German psychologies, — he 

Who his Juror vcrborxim assuages 
Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages 
More than will e'er be due to me. 

I looked on them nine several days, 
And then I saw that they were bad ; 

A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise, — 

He never read them ; — with amaze 
I found Sir William Drummond had. 

When the book came, the Devil sent 

It to P. Verbovale,T Esquire, 
With a brief note of compliment, 
By that night's Carlisle mail. It went, 

And set his soul on fire. 

Fire, which ex luce prcebens fumum, 
Made him beyond the bottom see 

Of truth's clear well — when I and you Ma'am, 

Go, as we shall do, subter humum, 
We may know more than he. 

Now Peter ran to seed in soul 

Into a walking paradox ; 
For he was neither part nor whole, 
Nor good, nor bad — nor knave nor fool, 

— Among the woods and rocks. 

Furious he rode, where late he ran, 
Lashing and spurring his tame hobby ; 

Turned to a formal puritan, 

A solemn and unsexual man, — 
He half believed White Obi. 

This steed in vision he would ride, 

High trotting over nine-inch bridges, 
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride, 
Mocking and mowing by his side — 
A mad-brained goblin for a guide — 
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges. 

* Vox populi, vox dei. As Mr. Godwin truly observes 
of a more famous saying, of some merit as a popular 
maxim, but totally destitute of philosophical accuracy. 

t Quasi, Qui valetverba :—i. e. all the words which have 
been, are, or may be expended by, for, against, with, or on 
him. A sufficient proof of the utility of this history. Peter's 
progenitor who selected this name seems to have possessed 
a pure anticipated cognition of the nature and measly of 
this ornament of his posterity. 



After these ghastly rides, he came 

Home to his heart, and found from thence 

Much stolen of its accustomed dame ; 

I lis thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame 
Of their intelligence. 

To Peter's view, all seemed one hue ; 

He was no whig, he was no tory ; 
No Deist and no Christian he ; — 
He got so subtle, that to be 

Nothing, was all his glory. 

One single point in his belief 

From his organisation sprung, 
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief 
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf, 

That " happiness is wrong ; " 

So thought Calvin and Dominic ; 

So think their fierce successors, who 
Even now would neither stint nor stick 
Our flesh from off our bones to pick, 

If they might " do their do." 

His morals thus were undermined : — 
The old Peter— the hard, old Potter 

Was born anew within his mind ; 

He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined, 

As when he tramped beside the Otter *. 

In the death hues of agony 

Lambently flashing from a fish, 
Now Peter felt amused to see 
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee, 

Mixed with a certain hungry wish.f 

So in his Country's dying face 
He looked — and lovely as she lay, 

Seeking in vain his last embrace, 

Wailing her own abandoned case, 

With hardened sneer he turned away: 

And coolly to his own soul said ; — 

" Do you not think that we might make 

A poem on her when she's dead : — 

Or, no — a thought is in my head — 
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take. 

" My wife wants one. — Let who will bury 
This mangled corpse ! And I and you, 
My dearest Soul, will then make merry, 
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry, — 
Ay — and at last desert me too." 

* A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynasto- 
phylic Pantisocratists. 

t See the description of the beautiful colours produced 
during the agonising death of a number of trout, in the 
fourth part of a long poem in blank verse, published 
within a few years. That poem contains curious evidence 
of the gradual hardening of a strong but circumscribed 
sensibility, of the perversion of a penetrating but panic- 
stricken understanding. The author might have derived 
a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these zweet 
and sublime verses. 

This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, 

Taught both by what she J shows and what conceals, 

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. 



Nature. 



PETEB BELL THE THIRD. 



245 



And so his Soul would not be gay, 

But moaned within him ; like a fawn 
Moaning within a cave, it lay 
Wounded and wasting, day by day > 
Till all its life of life was gone. 

As troubled skies stain waters clear, 

The storm in Peter's heart and mind 
Now made his verses dark and queer : 
They were the ghosts of what they wen", 
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind. 

For he now raved enormous folly, 

Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves, 
'Twould make George Colman melancholy, 
To have heard him, like a male Molly, 

Chaunting those stupid staves. 

Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse 
On Peter while he wrote for freedom, 

So soon as in his song they spy, 

The folly which soothes tyranny, 
Praise him, for those who feed 'em. 

" He was a man, too great to scan ; — 

A planet lost in truth's keen rays : — 
His virtue, awful and prodigious ; — 
He was the most sublime, religious, 
Pure-minded Poet of these days." 



As soon as he read that, cried Peter, 

" Eureka ! I have found the way 
To make a better thing of metre 
Than e'er was made by living creature 
Up to this blessed day." 

Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil ; — 
In one of which he meekly said : 

" May Carnage and Slaughter, 

Thy niece and thy daughter, 

May Rapine and Famine, 

Thy gorge ever cramming, 

Glut thee with living and dead ! 

" May death and damnation, 

And consternation, 
Flit up from hell with pure intent ! 

Slash them at Manchester, 

Glasgow, Leeds and Chester ; 
Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent. 

" Let thy body-guard yeomen 

Hew down babes and women, 
And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven 
be rent, 

When Moloch in Jewry, 

Munched children with fury, 
It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent."* 



PART THE SEVENTH. 

Worxblt damnation. 



The Devil now knew his proper cue 

Soon as he read the ode, he drove 

To his friend Lord Mac Murderchouse's, 

A man of interest in both houses, 
And said : — " For money or for love, 

" Pray find some cure or sinecure ; 

To feed from the superfluous taxes, 
A friend of ours — a poet — fewer 
Have fluttered tamer to the lure 

Than he." His lordship stands and racks his 

Stupid brains, while one might count 
As many beads as he had boroughs, — 

At length replies ; from his mean front, 

Like one who rubs out an account, 

Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows : 

" It happens fortunately, dear Sir, 

I can. I hope I need require 
No pledge from you, that he will stir 
In our affairs ; — like Oliver, 

That he'll be worthy of his hire." 

These words exchanged, the news sent off 

To Peter, home the Devil hied, — 
Took to his bed ; he had no cough, 
No doctor, — meat and drink enough, — 
Yet that same night he died. 



The Devil's corpse was leaded down ; 

His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf, 
Mourning-coaches, many a one, 
Followed his hearse along the town : — 

Where was the devil himself ? 

When Peter heard of his promotion, 

His eyes grew like two stars for bliss : 
There was a bow of sleek devotion, 
Engendering in his back ; each motion 
Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss. 

He hired a house, bought plate, and made 

A genteel drive up to his door, 
With sifted gravel neatly laid,— 
As if defying all who said, 

Peter was ever poor. 

* It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. 
Cobbett and Peter use the same language for a different 
purpose : Peter is indeed a sort of metrical Cobbett. 
Cobbett is, however, more mischievous tban Peter, because 
he pollutes a holy and now unconquerable cause with the 
principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only 
makes a bad one ridiculous and odious. 

If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will 
feel more indignation at being compared to the other than 
at any censure implied in the moral perversion laid to 
their charge. 



•24 1; 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



Hut a disease soon struck into 
The very lift ami soul o( Peter 

He walked about — -slept — had the hue 

Of health upon bis cheeks - ami few 
Dog better — none a heartier eater. 

Ami vet a strange and horrid curse 
Clung upon Peter, night and day, 
Mouth after month the thing grew worse, 

And deadlier than in this my verso, 
I can find strength to say. 

Peter was dull — he was at first 

Dull — 0, so dull — so very dull ! 
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed — 
Still with this dulness was ho cursed — 

Dull — beyond all conception — dull. 

No one could read his books— no mortal, 
But a few natural friends, would hear him ; 

The parson came not near his portal ; 

His state was like that of the immortal 

Described by Swift — no man could bear him. 

His sister, wife, and children yawned, 
With a long, slow, and drear ennui, 

All human patience far beyond ; 

Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned, 
Any where else to be. 

But in his verse, and in his prose, 

The essence of his dulness was 
Concentred and compressed so close, 
'Twould have made Guatimozin doze 

On his red gridiron of brass. 

A printer's boy, folding those pages, 

Fell slumbrously upon one side ; 
Like those famed seven who slept three ages. 
To wakeful frenzy's vigil rages, 

As opiates, were the same applied. 

Even the Reviewers who were hired 

To do the work of his reviewing, 
With adamantine nerves, grew tired ; — 
Gaping and torpid they retired, 

To dream of what they should be doing. 



And worse and worse, the drowsy curse 
Yawned in him, till it grew a pest — 

A wide contagious atmosphere, 

Creeping like cold through all things near . 
A power to infect and to infest. 

His servant-maids and dogs grew dull ; 

His kitten, late a sportive elf, 
The woods and lakes, so beautiful, 
Of dim stupidity were full, 

All grew dull as Peter's self. 

The earth under his feet — the springs, 

Which lived within it a quick life, 
The air, the winds of many wings, 
That fan it with new murmurings, 
Were dead to their harmonious strife. 

The birds and beasts within the wood, 
The insects, and each creeping thing, 

Were now a silent multitude ; 

Love's work was left unwrought — no brood 
Near Peter's house took wing. 

And every neighbouring cottager 

Stupidly yawned upon the other : 
No jack -ass brayed ; no little cur 
Cocked up his ears ; — no man would stir 
To save a dying mother. 

Yet all from that charmed district went 

But some half-idiot and half-knave, 
Who rather than pay any rent, 
Would live with marvellous content, 
Over his father's grave. 

No bailiff dared within that space, 
For fear of the dull charm, to enter ; 

A man would bear upon his face, 

For fifteen months in any case, 
The yawn of such a venture. 

Seven miles above — below — around — 
This pest of dulness holds its sway ; 

A ghastly life without a sound ; 

To Peter's soul the spell is bound — 
How should it ever pass away ? 






MISCELLANEOUS. 



247 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



LINES, 



WRITTEN DURING THE CaSTLEREAGH 
ADMINISTRATION. 



Corpses are cold in the tomb, 
Stones on the pavement are dumb, 
Abortions are dead in the womb, 
And their mothers look pale — like the white shore 
Of Albion, free no more. 

Her sons are as stones in the way — 
They are masses of senseless clay — 
They are trodden and move not away, — 
The abortion, with which she travaileth, 
Is Liberty — smitten to death. 

Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor, 
For thy Victim is no redressor, 
Thou art sole lord and possessor 
Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions — they pave 
Thy path to the grave. 

Hearest thou the festival din, 
Of death, and destruction, and sin, 
And wealth, crying Havoc ! within — 
'Tis the Bacchanal triumph, which makes truth 
Thine Epithalamium. [dumb, 

Ay, marry thy ghastly wife ! 
Let fear, and disquiet, and strife 
Spread thy couch in the chamber of life, 
Marry Ruin, thou tyrant ! and God be thy guide 
To the bed of the bride. 



SONG 

TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND. 

Men of England, wherefore plough 
For the lords who lay ye low ? 
Wherefore weave with toil and care, 
The rich robes your tyrants wear ? 

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, 
From the cradle to the grave, 
Those ungrateful drones who would 
Drain your sweat— nay, drink your blood ! 

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge 
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, 
That these stingless drones may spoil 
The forced produce of your toil ? 



Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, 
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm ? 
Or what is it ye buy so dear 
With your pain and with your fear l . 

The seed ye sow, another reaps ; 
The wealth ye find, another keeps ; 
The robes ye weave, another wears ; 
The arms ye forge, another bears. 

Sow seed, — but let no tyrant reap ; 
Find wealth, — let no impostor heap ; 
Weave robes, — let not the idle wear ; 
Forge arms, — in your defence to bear. 

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells ; 
In halls ye deck, another dwells. 
Why shake the chains ye wrought ? Ye sc 
The steel ye tempered glance on ye. 

With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, 
Trace your grave, and build your tomb, 
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair 
England be your sepulchre. 



SIMILES. 

FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 181 S 

As from an ancestral oak 

Two empty ravens sound their clarion, 
Yell by yell, and croak by croak, 
When they scent the noonday smoke 

Of fresh human carrion : — 



As two gibbering night-birds flit, 
From their bowers of deadly hue, 

Through the night to frighten it, 

When the morn is in a fit, 

And the stars are none or few : — 



As a shark and dog-fish wait 

Under an Atlantic isle, 
For the negro-ship, whose freight 
Is the theme of their debate, 

Wrinkling their red gills the while — 

Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, 

Two scorpions under one wet stone, 
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, 
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle, 
Two vipers tangled into one. 



248 



POEMS W KITTEN IN 1819. 



AN ODE, 

TO THE laSBBSOBa OF LIBERTY. 



AR1S1 . aviso, arise ! 

There is blood on the earth that denies ye broad ; 
Be your wounds like eyes 
To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead, 
What other grief were it just to pay I 
Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they; 
Who said they were slain on the battle day ! 

Awaken, awaken, awaken ! 
The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes ; 

Be the eold chains shaken 
To the dust, where your kindred repose, repose : 
Their bones in the grave will start and move, 
When they hear the voices of those they love, 
Most loud in the holy combat above. 

Wave, wave high the banner ! 
When Freedom is riding to conquest by : 

Though the slaves that fan her 
Be famine and toil, giving sigh for sigh. 
And ye who attend her imperial car, 
Lift not your hands in the banded war, 
But in her defence whose children ye are. 

Glory, glory, glory, 
To those who have greatly suffered and done ! 

Never name in story 
Was greater than that which ye shall have won. 
Conquerors have conquered their foes alone, 
Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have over- 
thrown: 
Ride ye, more victorious, over your own. 

Bind, bind every brow 
With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine : 

Hide the blood-stains now 
With hues which sweet nature has made divine, 
Green strength, azure hope, and eternity. 
But let not the pansy among them be ; 
Ye were injured, and that means memory. 



ENGLAND IN 1819. 

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, — 
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow 
Through public scorn — mud from a muddy 

spring,— 
Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, 
But leech-like to their fainting country cling, 
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, — 
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, — 
An army, which liberticide and prey 
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, 
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay,— 
Religion Christless, Godless — a book sealed ; 
A Senate — Time's worst statute unrepealed, — 
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may 
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. 



ODE TO HEAVEN. 

Chorus of Spirits, 
first SPIRIT. 
Palace-roof of cloudless nights ! 
Paradise of golden lights ! 

Deep, immeasurable, vast, 
Which art now, and which wert then ! 

Of the present and the past, 
Of the eternal where and when, 

Presence-chamber, temple, home, 

Ever-canopying dome, 

Of acts and ages yet to come ! 

Glorious shapes have life in thee, 
Earth, and all earth's company ; 

Living globes which ever throng 
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses ; 

And green worlds that glide along ; 
And swift stars with flashing tresses ; 

And icy moons most cold and bright, 

And mighty suns beyond the night, 

Atoms of intensest light. 

Even thy name is as a god, 
Heaven ! for thou art the abode 

Of that power which is the glass 
Wherein man his nature sees. 

Generations as they pass 
Worship thee with bended knees. 

Their unremaining gods and they 

Like a river roll away ; 

Thou remainest such alway. 

SECOND SPIRIT. 

Thou art but the mind's first chamber, 
Round which its young fancies clamber 1 , 

Like weak insects in a cave, 
Lighted up by stalactites ; 

But the portal of the grave, 
Where a world of new delights 

Will make thy best glories seem 

But a dim and noonday gleam 

From the shadow of a dream ! 

THIRD SPIRIT. 

Peace ! the abyss is wreathed with scorn 
At your presumption, atom-born ! 

What is heaven ? and what are ye 
Who its brief expanse inherit ? 

What are suns and spheres which flee 
With the instinct of that spirit 

Of which ye are but a part ? 

Drops which Nature's mighty heart 

Drives through thinnest veins. Depart ! 

What is heaven ? a globe of dew, 

Filling in the morning new 

Some eyed flower, whose young leaves waken 

On an unimagined world : 
Constellated suns unshaken, 

Orbits measureless, are furled 
In that frail and fading sphere, 
With ten millions gathered there, 
To tremble, gleam, and disappear. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



249 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND.* 



O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes : thou, 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 

The winged seeds, where they he cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 
With living hues and odours plain and hill : 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere ; 
Destroyer and preserver ; hear, oh hear ! 



ii. 

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's com- 
motion, 
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 
Shookirom the tangledboughs of Heavenand Ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning : there are spread 
On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Msenad, even from the dim verge 

Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night 
Will be the doom of a vast sepulchre, 
Vaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear! 



'Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 

Beside a pumice isle in Baise's bay, 
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

*This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a 
wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day 
when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at 
once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which 
pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, 
at sunset, with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended 
by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the 
Cisalpine regions. 

The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third 
stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the 
bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathises 
with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is con- 
sequently influenced by the winds which announce it. 



All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou 

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, 
And tremble and despoil themselves : Oh hear ! 



If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than thou, uncontrollable ! If even 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 
As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed 
Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne'er have striven 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
Oh ! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
I fall upon the thorns of life ' I bleed ! 

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 
One too like thee : tameless, and swift, and proud. 



Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ; 
And, by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 

The trumpet of a prophecy ! wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 



AN EXHORTATION. 

Cameleons feed on light and air : 
Poets' food is love and fame : 

If in this wide world of care 
Poets could but find the same 

With as little toil as they, 

Would they ever change their hue 
As the light cameleons do, 

Suiting it to every ray 

Twenty times a-day ? 



850 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



ire on this eold earth, 

ia osmeleons might be, 
Hidden from their early birth 

In I rave bOQOSth the son ; 
Where light is, osmeleons change ' 

Where k>ve is not, poets Jo : 

Rente is lore disguised : if few 
Find either, never think it strange 
That poets range. 

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power 

A poet's tree ami heavenly mind : 
If bright eameleons should devour 

Any food but beams and wind, 
They would grow as earthly soon 

As their brother lizards are. 

Children of a sunnier star, 
Spirits from beyond the moon, 
Oh, refuse the boon ! 



TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 



(With what truth I may say — 

Roma ! Roma ! Roma ! 
Non e piu come era prima ! ) 



My lost William, thou in whom 

Some bright spirit lived, and did 
That decaying robe consume 

Which its lustre faintly hid, 
Here its ashes find a tomb, 
But beneath this pyramid 
Thou art not — if a thing divine 
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine 
Is thy mother's grief and mine. 

Where art thou, my gentle child ? 

Let me think thy spirit feeds, 
With its life intense and mild, 
The love of living leaves and weeds, 
Among these tombs and ruins wild ; — 

Let me think that through low seeds 
Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, 
Into their hues and scents may pass, 
A portion 

June, 1819. 



THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, 

IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY. 

It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, 
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine ; 

Below, far lands are seen tremblingly ; 
Its horror and its beauty are divine. 

Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie 

Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine, 

Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, 

The agonies of anguish and of death. 

Yet it is less the horror than the grace 
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone 

Whereon the lineaments of that dead face 
Are graven, till the characters be grown 

Into itself, and thought no more can trace ; 
'Tis the melodious hues of beauty thrown 

Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, 

Which humanize and harmonize the strain. 

And from its head as from one body grow, 
As [ ] grass out of a watery rock, 

Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow, 
And their long tangles in each other lock, 

And with unending involutions show 

Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock 

The torture and the death within, and saw 

The solid air with many a ragged jaw. 

And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft 
Peeps idly into these Gorgonian eyes ; 

Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft 
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise 

Out of the cave this hideous light hath cleft, 
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies 

After a taper ; and the midnight sky 

Flares, a light more dread than obscurity. 

'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror ; 

For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare 
Kindled by that inextricable error, 

Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air 
Become a [ ] and ever-shifting mirror 

Of all the beauty and the terror there — 
A woman's countenance, wath serpent locks, 
Grazing in death on heaven from those wet 
rocks. 

Florence, 1819. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF lbl9. 



251 



NOTE ON THE POEMS OF 1819. 



BY THE EDITOR. 



Though Shelley's first eager desire to excite his j 
countrymen to resist openly the oppressions exis- , 
tent during " the good old times" had faded with 
early youth, still his warmest sympathies were 
for the people. He was a republican, and loved 
a democracy. He looked on all human heings 
as inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest 
privileges of our nature, the necessaries of life, 
when fairly earned by labour, and intellectual 
instruction. His hatred of any despotism, that 
looked upon the people as not to be consulted or 
protected from want and ignorance, was intense. 
He was residing near Leghorn, at Villa Valsovano, 
writing The Cenci, when the news of the Man- 
chester Massacre reached us ; it roused in him 
violent emotions of indignation and compassion. 
The great truth that the many, if accordant and 
resolute, could control the few, as was shown some 
years after, made him long to teach his injured 
countrymen how to resist. Inspired by these 
feelings, he wrote the Masque of Anarchy, which 
he sent to his friend, Leigh Hunt, to be inserted 
in the Examiner, of which he was then the Editor. 

* I did not insert it," Leigh Hunt writes in his 
valuable and interesting preface to this poem, 
when he printed it in 1832, a because I thought 
that the public at large had not become sufficiently 
discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind- 
heartedness of his spirit, that walked in this flaming 
robe of verse." Days of outrage have passed 
away, and with them the exasperation that would 
cause such an appeal to the many to be injurious. 
Without being aware of them, they at one time 
acted on his suggestions, and gained the day ; but 
they rose when human life was respected by the j 
minister in power ; such was not the case during the I 
ad^ministration which excited Shelley's abhorrence. I 

The poem was written for the people, and is j 
therefore in a more popular tone than usual ; 
portions strike as abrupt and unpolished, but many 
stanzas are all his own. I heard him repeat, and j 
admired those beginning, — 

My Father Time is old and grey, 



before I knew to what poem they were to belong. 
But the most touching passage is that which 
describes the blessed effects of liberty; they might 
make a patriot of any man, whose heart was not 
wholly closed against his humbler fellow-crea- 
tures. 

Shelley loved the people, and respected them as 
often more virtuous, as always more suffering, and, 
therefore, more deserving of sympathy, than the 
great. He believed that a clash between the two 
classes of society was inevitable, and he eagerly 
ranged himself on the people's side. He had an 
idea of publishing a series of poems adapted 
expressly to commemorate their circumstances 
and wrongs — he wrote a few, but in those days of 
prosecution for libel they could not be printed. 
They are not among the best of his productions, a 
writer being always shackled when he endeavours 
to write down to the comprehension of those who 
could not understand or feel a highly imaginative 
style ; but they show his earnestness, and with 
what heartfelt compassion he went home to the 
direct point of injury — that oppression is detest- 
able, as being the parent of starvation, nakedness, 
and ignorance. Besides these outpourings of 
compassion and indignation, he had meant to 
adorn the cause he loved with loftier poetry of 
glory and triumph — such is the scope of the Ode 
to the Assertors of Liberty. He sketched also a 
new version of our national anthem, as addressed 
to Liberty. 

God prosper, speed, and save, 
God raise from England's grave 

Her murdered Queen ! 
Pave with swift victory 
The steps of Liberty, 
Whom Britons own to be 

Immortal Queen. 

See, she comes throned on high, 
Ou swift Eternity ! 

God save the Queen ! 

Millions on millions wait 
Firm, rapid, and elate, 
On her majestic state ! 

God save the Queen ! 






KhlTOK- NOTE ON POKMS OF 1819. 



Sh« is thine own mire soul 
Moulding the mighty v hole. 

God save UM Queen ! 
She is th'uw own deep lovo 

Reined down from heaven above, 
Wherever rite reel or move. 

Cod Mtve our Queen ! 

Wilder her enemies 

In their own dark disguise, 

God save our Queen • 
All earthly things that dare 
Her Baored name to bear, 
Strip them, as kings are, bare ; 

God save the Queen ! 

Be her eternal throne 
Built in our hearts alone, 

God save the Queen ! 
Let the oppressor hold 
Canopied seats of gold ; 
She sits enthroned of old 

O'er our hearts Queen. 

Lips touched by seraphim 
Breathe out the choral hymn 

God save the Queen ! 
Sweet as if Angels sang, 
Loud as that trumpet's clang 
"Wakening the world's dead gang, 

God save the Queen ! 

Shelley had suffered severely from the death of 
our son during this summer. His heart, attuned 
to every kindly affection, was full of burning love 
for his offspring. No words can express the 
anguish he felt when his elder children were torn 
from him. In his first resentment against the 
Chancellor, on the passing of the decree, he had 
written a curse, in which there breathes, besides 
haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father's 
love, which could imagine and fondly dwell upon 
its loss and the consequences. It is as follows : — 



TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 

Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest Crest 
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm, 

Which rends our Mother's bosom — Priestly Pest ! 
Masked Resurrection of a buried form ! * 

Thy country's curse is on thee ! Justice sold, 
Truth trampled, Nature's land-marks overthrown, 

And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold, 
Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne. 

And whilst that slow sure Angel, which aye stands, 

"Watching the beck of Mutability, 
Delays to execute her high commands, 

And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee : 

O let a father's curse be on thy soul, 
And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb, 

And both on thy grey head, a leaden cowl, 
To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom ! 

* The Star Chamber. 



1 eurse thee by a parent's outraged lovo, 
i»v hopes long cherished and too lately lost, 

By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove, 
By griefs which thy stern nature never crost : 

By those infantine smiles of happy light, 
Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth, 

Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night, 
Hiding the promise of a lovely birth : 

By those unpractised accents of young speech, 
Which he who is a father thought to frame 

To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach ; 
Thou strike the lyre of mind ! O grief and shame ! 

By all the happy see in children's growth, 
That undeveloped flower of budding years, 

Sweetness and sadness interwoven both, 
Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears : 

By all the days under a hireling's care 
Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness, — 

wretched ye, if ever any were, 
Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless ! 

By the false cant, which on their innocent lips, 
Must hang like poison on an opening bloom, 

By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse 
Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb: 

By thy most impious Hell, and all its terrors, 
By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt 

Of thine impostures, which must be their errors, 
That sand on which thy crumbling Power is built 

By thy complicity with lust and hate, 
Thy thirst for tears, thy hunger after gold, 

The ready frauds which ever on thee wait, 
The servile arts in which thou hast grown old ; 

By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile, 
By all the acts and snares of thy black den, 

And— for thou canst outweep the crocodile,— 
By thy false tears— those millstones braining men ; 

By all the hate which checks a father's love, 
By all the scorn which kills a father's care, 

By those most impious hands that dared remove 
Nature's high bounds— by thee— and by despair ! 

Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, 
And cry, my children are no longer mine ; 

The blood within those veins may be mine own, 
But, Tyrant, their polluted souls are thine. 

1 curse thee, though I hate thee not ; O slave ! 

If thou couldst quench the earth-consuming hell 
Of which thou art a daemon, on thy grave 
This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well ! 

At one time, while the question was still pending, 
the Chancellor had said some words that seemed 
to intimate that Shelley should not be permitted 
the care of any of his children, and for a moment 
he feared that our infant son would be torn from 
us. He did not hesitate to resolve, if such were 
menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything, 
and to escape with his child ; and I find some 
unfinished stanzas addressed to this son, whom 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 1819. 



253 



afterwards we lost at Rome, written under the 
idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross 
the sea, so to preserve him. This poem, as well 
as the one previously quoted, were not written to 
exhibit the pangs of distress to the public ; they 
were the spontaneous outbursts of a man who 
brooded over his wrongs and woes, and was 
impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the 
uncontrollable emotions of his heart : — 

The billows on the beach are leaping around it, 

The bark is weak and frail, 
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it 

Darkly strew the gale. 
Come with me, thou delightful child, 
Come with me, though the wave is wild, 
And the winds are loose, we must not stay, 
Or the slaves of law may rend thee away. 

They have taken thy brother and sister dear, 

They have made them unfit for thee ; 
They have withered the smile and dried the tear, 

Which should have been sacred to me. 
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime 
They have bound them slaves in youthly time, 
And they will curse my name and thee 
Because we fearless are and free. 

Come thou, beloved as thou art, 

Another sleepeth still, 
Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart, 

Which thou with joy wilt fill ; 
With fairest smiles of wonder thrown 
On that which is indeed our own, 
And which in distant land3 will be 
The dearest playmate unto thee. 

Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever, 

Or the priests of the evil faith ; 
They stand on the brink of that raging river, 

Whose waves they have tainted with death. 
It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells, 
Around them it foams and rages and swells ; 
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, 
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity. 

Rest, rest, shriek not, thou gentle child ! 

The rocking of the boat thou fearest, 
And the cold spray and the clamour wild ? 

There sit between us two, thou dearest ; 
Me and thy mother — well we know 
The storm at which thou tremblest so, 
With all its dark and hungry graves, 
Less cruel than the savage slaves 
Who hunt thee o'er these sheltering waves. 

This hour will in thy memory 

Be a dream of days forgotten ; 
We soon shall dwell by the azure sea 

Of serene and golden Italy, 

Or Greece, the Mother of the free. 
And I will teach thine infant tongue 
To call upon their heroes old 
In their own language, and will mould 
Thy growing spirit in the flame 
Of Grecian lore ; that by such name 
A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim. 



I ought to observe that the fourth verse of this 
effusion is introduced in Rosalind and Helen. 

When afterwards this child died at Rome, he 
wrote, apropos of the English burying-ground in 
that city, " This spot is the repository of a sacred 
loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's heart 
are now prophetic ; he is rendered immortal by 
love, as his memory is by death. My beloved 
child lies buried here. I envy death the body far 
less than the oppressors the minds of those whom 
they have torn from me. The one can only kill 
the body, the other crushes the affections." 

In this new edition I have added to the poems 
of this year, " Peter Bell the Third." A critique 
on Wordsworth's Peter Bell reached us at Leghorn, 
which amused Shelley exceedingly and suggested 
this poem. 

I need scarcely observe that nothing personal 
to the Author of Peter Bell is intended in this 
poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth's 
poetry more ; — he read it perpetually, and taught 
others to appreciate its beauties. This poem is, 
like all others written by Shelley, ideal. He con- 
ceived the idealism of a poet — a man of lofty and 
creative genius, — quitting the glorious calling of 
discovering and announcing the beautiful and 
good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices 
and pernicious errors ; imparting to the unen- 
lightened, not that ardour for truth and spirit of 
toleration which Shelley looked on as the sources 
of the moral improvement and happiness of man- 
kind ; but false and injurious opinions, that evil 
was good, and that ignorance and force were the 
best allies of purity and virtue. His idea was 
that a man gifted even as transcendantly as the 
Author of Peter Bell, with the highest qualities 
of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be 
infected with dulness. This poem was written, 
as a warning — not as a narration of the reality. 
He was unacquainted personally with Words- 
worth or with Coleridge, (to whom he alludes in the 
fifth part of the poem,) and therefore, I repeat, 
his poem is purely ideal ; — it contains something 
of criticism on the compositions of these great 
poets, but nothing injurious to the men them- 
selves. 

No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar 
views, with regard to the errors into which many of 
the wisest have fallen, and of the pernicious effects 
of certain opinions on society. Much of it is 
beautifully written — and though, like the burlesque 
drama of Swellfoot, it must be looked on as a play- 
thing, it has so much merit and poetry — so much 
of himself in it, that it cannot fail to interest 
greatly, and by right belongs to the world for 
whose instruction and benefit it was written. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXX. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 



PART L 

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, 
And the young winds fed it with silver dew, 
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
And closed them beneath the kisses of night. 

And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 

And the Spirit of Love fell everywhere ; 

And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast 

Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. 

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss 
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 
Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, 
As the companionless Sensitive Plant. 

The snowdrop, and then the violet, 
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, 
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent 
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. 

Then the pied windflowers and the tulip tall, 
And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, 
Till they die of their own dear loveliness. 

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, 
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, 
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen 
Through their pavilions of tender green ; 

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, 
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew 
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, 
It was felt like an odour within the sense ; 

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, 
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, 
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare ; 

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, 

As a Msenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, 

Till the fiery star, which is its eye, 

Gazed through the clear dew on the tender sky ; 

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, 
The sweetest flower for scent that blows ; 
And all rare blossoms from every clime 
Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 



And on the stream whose inconstant bosom 
Was prankt, under boughs of embowering blossom, 
With golden and green light, slanting through 
Their heaven of many a tangled hue, 

Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, 

And starry river-buds glimmered by, 

And around them the soft stream did glide and dance 

With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. 

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, 
Which led through the garden along and across, 
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, 
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, 

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells, 
As fair as the fabulous asphodels, 
And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too, 
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, 
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew. 

And from this undefiled Paradise 
The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes 
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it), 

When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, 
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, 
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one 
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun; 

For each one was interpenetrated 
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed, 
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear, 
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere. 

But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit 
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, 
Received more than all, it loved more than ever, 
Where none wanted but it,could belong to the giver— 

For the sensitive Plant has no bright flower ; 
Radiance and odour are not its dower ; 
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, 
It desires what it has not, the beautiful ! 

The light winds, which from unsustaining wings 
Shed the music of many murmurings ; 
The beams which dart from many a star 
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar ; 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 



255 



The plumed insects swift and free, 
Like golden boats on a sunny sea, 
Laden with light and odour, which pass 
Over the gleam of the living grass ; 

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie 
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high, 
Then wander like spirits among the spheres, 
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears ; 

The quivering vapours of dim noontide, 
W hich, like a sea o'er the warm earth glide, 
In which every sound, and odour, and beam, 
Move, as reeds in a single stream ; 

Each and all like ministering angels were 
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, 
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by 
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. 

And when evening descended from heaven above, 
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love, 
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, 
And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, 

And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were 
In an ocean of dreams without a sound ; [drowned 
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress 
The light sand which,paves it, consciousness ; 

(Only overhead the sweet nightingale 

Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, 

And snatches of its Elysian chant 

Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant.) 

The Sensitive Plant was the earliest 
Up-gathered into the bosom of rest ; 
A sweet child weary of its delight, 
The feeblest and yet the favourite, 
Cradled within the embrace of night. 



PART II. 

There was a Power in this sweet place, 
An Eve in this Eden ; a ruling grace 
Which to the flowers, did they waken or c'ream, 
Was as God is to the starry scheme. 

A Lady, the wonder of her kind, 
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind, 
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion 
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean, 

Tended the garden from morn to even : 
And the meteors of that sublunar heaven, 
Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth, 
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth ! 

She had no companion of mortal race, 
But her tremulous breath and her flushing face 
Told whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes, 
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise : 

As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake 

Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake, 

As if yet around her he lingering were, 

Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. 



Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest : 
You might hear, by the heaving of her breast, 
That the coming and the going of the wind 
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind. 

And wherever her airy footstep trod, 
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod 
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep, 
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep. 

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet 
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet ; 
1 doubt not they felt the spirit that came 
From her glowing fingers through all their frame. 

She sprinkled bright water from the stream 
On those that were faint with the sunny beam ; 
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 
She emptied the rain of the thunder showers. 

She lifted their heads with her tender hands, 
And sustained them with rods and osier bands ; 
If the flowers had been her own infants, she 
Could never have nursed them more tenderly. 

And all killing insects and gnawing worms, 
And things of obscene and unlovely forms, 
She bore in a basket of Indian woof, 
Into the rough woods far aloof, 

In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full, 
The freshest her gentle hands could pull 
For the poor banished insects, whose intent, 
Although they did ill, was innocent. 

But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris, 
Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that 

kiss 
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she 
Make her attendant angels be. 

And many an antenatal tomb, 
Where butterflies dream of the life to come, 
She left clinging round the smooth and. dark 
Edge of the odorous cedar bark. 

This fairest creature from earliest spring 
Thus moved through the garden ministering 
All the sweet season of summer tide, 
And ere the first leaf looked brown — she died ! 



PART III. 

Three days the flowers of the garden fair, 
Like stars when the noon is awakened, Avere, 
Or the waves of the Baise, ere luminous 
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius. 

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant 
Felt the sound of the funeral chant, 
And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, 
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low ; 

The weary sound and the heavy breath, 
And the silent motions of passing death, 
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, 
Sent through the pores of the coffin plank ; 



25(5 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass, 
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass; 
From their si<j;hs the wind caught a mournful tone, 
And sate in the nines and gave gi'oan for groan. 

The garden, ones fair, became cold and foul, 
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul : 
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep, 
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap 
To make men tremble who never weep. 

Swift summer into the autumn flowed, 
And frost in the mist of the morning rode, 
Though the noon-day sun looked clear and bright, 
Mocking the spoil of the secret night. 

The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, 
Paved the turf and the moss below. 
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, 
Like the head and the skin of a dying man. 

And Indian plants, of scent and hue 
The sweetest that ever wei'e fed on dew, 
Leaf after leaf, day by day, 
Were massed into the common clay. 

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, and red, 
And white with the whiteness of what is dead, 
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past ; 
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast. 

And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds 
Out of their birth-place of ugly weeds, 
Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, 
Which rotted into the earth with them. 

The water-blooms under the rivulet 
Fell from the stalks on which they were set ; 
And the eddies drove them here and there, 
As the winds did those of the upper air. 

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks 
Were bent and tangled across the walks ; 
And the leafless net-work of parasite bowers 
Massed into ruin, and all sweet flowers. 

Between the time of the wind and the snow, 

All loathliest weeds began to grow, 

Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a 

speck, 
Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back. 

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, 
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, 
Stretch'd out its long and hollow shank, 
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank. 

And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, 
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, 
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, ^nd blue, 
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. 

And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, 
Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; 
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 
With a spirit of growth had been animated ! 



Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, 
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, 
And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes 
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water- 
snakes. 

And hour by hour, when the air was still, 
The vapours arose which have strength to kill : 
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, 
At night they were darkness no star could melt. 

And unctuous meteors from spray to spray 
Crept and flitted in broad noon-day 
Unseen ; every branch on which they alit 
By a venomous blight was burned and bit. 

The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid, 
Wept, and the tears within each lid 
Of its folded leaves which together grew, 
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. 

For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon 
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn ; 
The sap shrank to the root through every pore, 
As blood to a heart that will beat no more. 

For Winter came : the wind was his whip ; 
One. choppy finger was on his Up : 
He had torn the cataracts from the hills, 
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles ; 

His breath was a chain which without a sound 
The earth, and the air, and the water bound ; 
He came, fiercely driven in his chariot- throne 
By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone. 

Then the weeds which were forms of living death, 
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath : 
Their decay and sudden flight from frost 
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost ! 

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant 
The moles and the dormice died for want : 
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air, 
And were caught in the branches naked and 
bare. 

First there came down a thawing rain, 
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again, 
Then there steamed up a freezing dew 
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew ; 

And a northern whirlwind, wandering about 
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, 
Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy and stiff, 
And snapped them off with his rigid griff. 

When winter had gone and spring came back, 

The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck ; 

But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and 

darnels, 
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels. 



A VISION OF THE SKA. 



257 



CONCLUSION. 

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that 
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, 
Ere its outward form had known decay, 
Now felt this change, I cannot say. 

Whether that lady's gentle mind, 
No longer with the form combined 
Which scattered love, as stars do light, 
Found sadness, where it left delight, 

I dare not guess ; but in this life 
Of error, ignorance and strife, 
Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream, 

It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant, if one considers it, 
To own that death itself must be, 
Like all the rest, a mockery. 

That garden sweet, that lady fair, 
And all sweet shapes and odours there, 
In truth have never passed away : 
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed ! not they. 

For love, and beauty, and delight, 
There is no death nor change ; their might 
Exceeds our organs*, wliich endure 
No light, being themselves obscure. 



Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale 
In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire [fire, 
The pyramid-billows, with white points of brine, 
In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine, 
' As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea. 

The great ship seems splitting ! it cracks as a tree, 
| While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the 

blast 
Of the whirlwind that stript it of branches has 

past. 
The intense thunder-balls which are raining from 

heaven 
Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and 

riven. 
The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk 
On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, 
Like a corpse on the clay which is hung'ring to 

fold 
Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the 

hold, 
One deck is burst up from the waters below, 
And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes 

blow 
O'er the lakes of the desert ! Who sit on the other ? 
Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, 
Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast ? 

Are those 
Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, 
In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold 
(What now makes them tame, is what then made 

them bold) 
Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a 

crank, 
The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating 
Are these all ? [plank ? 



A VISION OF THE SEA. 



'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail 
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale : 
From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is 

driven, 
And when lightning is loosed like a deluge from 

heaven, 
She sees the black trunks of the water-spouts spin, 
And bend, as if heaven was ruining in, 
Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible 



As if ocean had sunk from beneath them : they 

pass 
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of 

sound, 
And the waves and the thunders, made silent I 

around, 
Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed 
Through the low trailing rack of the tempest, is 

lost 
In the skirts of the thunder-cloud : now down the 

sweep 
Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep 
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale 
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the 

gale, 
Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about ; 
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout 
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing 

iron, 
With splendour and terror the black ship environ; 



Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain 
On the windless expanse of the watery plain, 
Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at 

noon, 
And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the 

moon, 
Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep, 
Whose breath was quick pestilence ; then, the cold 

sleep 
Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field 

of corn, 
O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn, 
With their hammocks for coffins the seamen 

aghast 
Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades 

cast 
Down the deep, which closed on them above and 

around, 
And the sharks and the dog-fish their grave-clothes 

unbound, 
And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained 

down 
From God on their wilderness. One after one 
The mariners died ; on the eve of this day, 
When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array, 
But seven remained. Six the thunder had smitten, 
And they lie black as mummies on which Time has 

written 
His scorn of the embalmer ; the seventh, from the 

deck 
An oak splinter pierced through his breast and his 

back, 
And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck. 



258 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



No more ? At the holm sits a woman more fair 
Than heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided 

hair, 
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the son. 
She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee, 
It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed 

thunder 

Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder 
It is beckoning the tigers to rise and eome near, 
It would play with those eves where the radiance 

of feat- 
Is outshining the meteors ; its bosom heats high, 
The heart -tire of pleasure has kindled its eye ; 
Whilst its mother's is lustreless. ' v Smile not, my 

child, 
But Bleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled 
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be. 
So dreadful since thou must divide it with me ! 
Dream, sleep I This pale bosom, thv cradle and 

bed, 
Will it rock thee not, infant ? 'Tis beating with 

dread ! 
Alas ! what is life, what is death, what are we, 
That when the ship smks we no longer may be? 
What ! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no 

more ? 
To be after life what we have been before ? [eyes, 
Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those 
Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise 
Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by 

day, 
Have so long called my child, but which now fades 

away 
Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower ?" 

Lo ! the ship 
Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip; 
The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine 
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, Kmbs, 

and eyne, 
Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry 
Burst at once from their vitals tremendously, 
And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the 

wave, 
Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave, 
Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain, 
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane : 
The hurricane came from the west, and past on 
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun, 
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm ; 
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form 
Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the 

waste. 
Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, 
Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, past, 
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the 

world 
Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurled, 
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain 
The dome of the tempest ; it rent them in twain, 
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous 

crag: 
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag, 
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has 

past, 
Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast ; 
They are scattered like foam on the torrent ; and 

where 
The wind has burst out through the chasm, from 

the air 



Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise flow in, 
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline, 
Handed armies of light and of air ; at one gate 
They encounter, but interpenetrate. 
And that breach in the tempest is widening away, 
And the caverns of cloud ai*e torn up by the day, 
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings, 
Lulled by the motion and murmurings, 
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea, 
And over head glorious, but dreadful to see, 
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold, 
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves 

behold, 
The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above, 
And, like passions made still by the presence of 

Love, 
Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide 
Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide 
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle, 
Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's 

azure smile, 
The wide world of waters is vibrating. 

Where 
Is the ship ? On the verge of the wave where it lay 
One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray [battle 

With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the 
Stain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the 

rattle 
Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress 
Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness; 
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains 
Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the 

veins, 
Swollen with rage, strength, and effort ; the whirl 

and the splash 
As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash 
The thin winds and soft waves into thunder ! the 

screams 
And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean- 
streams, 
Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion, 
A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean, 
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other 
Is winning his way from the fate of his brother, 
To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat 
Advances ; twelve rowers with the impulse of 

thought 
Urge on the keen keel, the brine foams. At the stern 
C?hree marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets 

burn 
In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on 
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone, 
'Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone, 
Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea. 
With her left hand she grasps it impetuously, 
With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, 

Fear, 
Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere, 
Which trembles and burns with the fervour of 

dread 
Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her 

head, 
Like a meteor of light o'er the waters ! her child 
Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring : so 

smiled 
The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and 

brother 
The child and the ocean still smile on each other, 
Whilst 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



253 



-r 



THE CLOUD. 



I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 

From the seas and the streams ; 
T bear light shades for the leaves when laid 

In their noon- day dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet buds every one, 
When rocked to rest on their mother's bread , 

As she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 

And whiten the green plains under, 
And then again I dissolve it in rain, 

And laugh as I pass in thunder. 



I sift the snow on the mountains below, 

And their great pines groan aghast ; 
And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 

While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, 

Lightning my pilot sits, 
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, 

It struggles and howls at fits ; 
Over earth and ocean with gentle motion, 

This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the love of the genii that move 

In the depths of the purple sea ; 
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, 

Over the lakes and the plains, 
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, 

The Spirit he loves remains ; 
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 

Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 



The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 

And his burning plumes outspread, 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 

When the morning star shines dead. 
As on the jag of a mountain crag, 

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, 
An eagle alit one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. 
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit se; 
beneath, 

Its ardours of rest and of love, 
And the crimson pall of eve may fall 

From the depth of heaven above, 
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, 

As still as a brooding dove. 



That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, 

Whom mortals call the moon, 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, 

By the midnight breezes strewn ; 
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 

Which only the angels hear, 
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, 

The stars peep behind her and peer ; 
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, 

Like a swarm of golden bees, 
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, 

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, 
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high. 

Are each paved with the moon and these. 



I bind the sun's throne with the burning /.one, 

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars red and swim, 

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape. 

Over a. torrent sea, 
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, 

The mountains its columns be. 
Tho triumphal arch through which 1 march, 

With hurricane, fire, and snow, 
When the powers of the air are chained to my 

Is the million-coloured bow ; [chair, 

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, 

While the moist earth was laughing below. 



1 am the daughter of earth and water, 

And the nursling of the sky: 
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 

I change, but I cannot die. 
For after the rain, when with never a stain, 

The pavilion of heaven is bare, 
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex 

Build up the blue dome of air, [gleams, 

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 

And out of the caverns of rain, 
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the 

I arise and unbuild it again. [tomb. 



LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY. 

The fountains mingle with the river, 

And the rivers with the ocean, 
The winds of heaven mix for ever 

With a sweet emotion ; 
Nothing in the world is single ; 

All things by a law divine 
In one another's being mingle — 

Why not I with thine % 

See the mountains kiss high heaven, 

And the waves clasp one another ; 
No sister flower would be forgiven 

If it disdained its brother : 
And the sunlight clasps the earth, 

And the moonbeams kiss the sea ; - 
What are all these kissings worth, 

If thou kiss not me ? 

January, 1820. 



TO 



I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden, 
Thou needest not fear mine ; 

My spirit is too deeply laden 
Ever to burthen thine. 

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion, 
Thou needest not fear mine ; 

Innocent is the heart's devotion 
With which I worship thine. 



MO 






POKMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



TO \ SKYLARK. 



U mi. to thee, blithe spirit ! 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 
Poorest thy full heart 
in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 



Higher still and higher, 

From the earth thou springest 
Like a cloud of fire ; 
The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 



In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 
Thou dost float and run ; 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 



The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight ; 
Like a star of heaven, 

In the broad day -light 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. 



Keen as are the arrows 

Of that silver sphere, 
Whose intense lamp narrows 

In the white dawn clear, 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 



Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering uubeholdcn 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from 
the view: 



Like a rose embowered 

In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflowered, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy- 
winged thieves. 



Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers, 

All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 



Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine: 

I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 



Chorus hymeneal, 

Or triumphal chaunt, 
Matched with thine would be all 
But an empty vaunt — 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 



All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over- 
flowed. 



What thou art we know not ; 

What is most like thee ? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 
Drops so bright to see, 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 



Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 

Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: 



Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 
Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her 
bower : 



What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain ? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 
What shapes of sky or :plain ? 
What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of 
pain? 



With thy clear keen joyance 

Languor cannot be : 
Shadow of annoyance 
Never came near thee : 
Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 

XVII. 

Waking or asleep, 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 

Than we mortals dream, 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 

xvxrr. 
We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 
thought. 



ODE TO LIBERTY. 



26\ 



XIX. 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
If we were things born 
Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 



Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 

That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 



Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow, 
The world should listen then, as I am listening 
now. 



ODE TO LIBERTY. 



Yet freedom, yet, thy banner torn but flying, 
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind. 

BYRON. 



A glorious people vibrated again 

The lightning of the nations : Liberty, 
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er 
Spain, 
Scattering contagious fire into the sky, 
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, 
And, in the rapid plumes of song, 
Clothed itself sublime and strong ; 
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, 
Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey ; 
Till from its station in the heaven of fame 
The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and the ray 
Of the remotest sphere of living flame 
Which paves the void, was from behind it flung, 
As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came 
A voice out of the deep ; I will record the 
same. 



The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth ; 

The burning stars of the abyss were hurl'd 

Into the depths of heaven. The daedal earth, 

That island in the ocean of the world, 
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air : 
But this divinest universe 
Was yet a chaos and a curse, 
For thou wertnot : but power from worst producing 
worse, 
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, 
And of the birds, and of the watery forms, 
And there was war among them and despair 

Within them, raging without truce or terms : 
The bosom of their violated nurse 

Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms 

on worms, [storms. 

And men on men; each heart was as a hell of 



Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied 

His generations under the pavilion 
Of the sun's throne : palace and pyramid, 

Temple and prison, to many a swarming million, 
Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. 
This human living multitude 
Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, 
For thou wert not ; but o'er the populous solitude, 
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, 

Hung tyranny ; beneath, sate deified 
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves ; 
Into the shadow of her pinions wide, 
Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood, 
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, 
Drove the astonished herds of men from every 
side. 

IV. 

The nodding promontories, and blue isles, 

And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves 

Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles 
Of favouring heaven : from their enchanted caves 

Prophetic echoes flung dim melody 
On the unapprehensive wild. 
The vine, the corn, the olive mild, 

Grew, savage yet, to human use unreconciled ; 
And like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, 
Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, 
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, 
Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein 

Of Parian stone ; and yet a speechless child, 
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain 
Her lidless eyes for thee ; when o'er the iEgean 



Athens arose : a city such as vision 

Builds from the purple crags and silver towers 
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision 

Of kingliest masonry : the ocean floors 
Pave it ; the evening sky pavilions it ; 
Its portals are inhabited 
By thunder-zoned winds, each head 
Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded, 
A divine work ! Athens diviner yet 

Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will 
Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set ; 
For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill 
Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead 
In marble immortality, that hill 
Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. 



Within the surface of Time's fleeting river 

Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay 
Immoveably unquiet, and for ever 

It trembles, but it cannot pass away ! 
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder 
With an earth-awakening blast 
Through the caverns of the past ; 
Religion veils her eyes ; Oppression shrinks aghast: 
A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, 
Which soars where Expectation never flew, 
Rending the veil of space and time asunder ! 
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and 
dew ; 
One sun illumines Heaven ; one spirit vast 
With life and love makes chaos ever new, 
As Athens doth the world with thy delight 
renew. 



J 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, 

Like ■ wolf-cub from ■ Carimman Msenad*, 
She drew the milk oi' greatness, though thy dearesi 

From that Flysian food was vet unwoaned , 
And many a deed of terrible uprightness 
By thy sweet love was sanctified ; 
And i"n thy smile, and by thy side, 
Saintly Camillas lived, ami firm Atilins died. |ness, 
Hat' when tears stained thy robe of vestal white- 
Ami gold profaned thy capitolian throne, 

Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, 
The senate of the tyrants : thev sunk prone 
S!;>.\ es of one tyrant. Palatums sighed 
Faint echoes of Ionian song ; that tone 
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown. 



From what llyrcaniau glen or frozen hill, 
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, 
Or utmost islet inaccessible, 

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, 
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, 
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn, 
To talk in echoes sad and stern, 
Of t hat sublimes! lore which man had daredunlearn? 
For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks 
Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's 
sleep. [locks, 

What if the tears rained through thy shattered 
Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not 
When from its sea of death to kill and burn, [weep, 
The Galilean serpent forth did creep, 
And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. 



A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou? 

And then the shadow of thy coming fell 
On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow : 

And many a warrior-peopled citadel, 
Like rocks, which fire lifts out of the flat deep, 
Arose in sacred Italy, 
Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea 
Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned 
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep, [majesty; 
And burst around their walls, like idle foam, 
Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep, 
Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb 
Dissonant arms ; and Art which cannot die, 
With divine want traced on our earthly home 
Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome. 



Thou huntress swifter than the Moon ! thou terror 

Of the world's wolves ! thou bearer of the quiver, 

Whose sun-like shafts pierce tempest- winged Error, 

As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever 

In the calm regions of the orient day ! 

Luther caught thy wakening glance : 
Like lightning from his leaden lance 
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance 
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay ; 

And England's prophets hailed thee as their 
In songs whose music cannot pass away, [queen, 
Though it must flow for ever : not unseen 
Before the spirit-sighted countenance 

Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene 
Beyond whose night he saw,with a dejected mien. 

* bee the Bacchae of Euripides. 



The eager hours and unroluctant years 

As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, 
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, 

Darkening each other with their multitude, 
And cried aloud, Liberty ! Indignation 
Answered Pity from her cave ; 
Death grew pale within the grave, 
And desolation howled to the destroyer, Save ! 
When, like heaven's sun, girt by the exhalation 

Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, 
Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation 

Like shadows : as if day had cloven the skies 
At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, 
Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, 
Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. 



Thou heaven of earth ! what spells could pall thee 
In ominous eclipse ? A thousand years, [then, 
Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den, 

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, 
Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away ; 
How like Bacchanals of blood 
Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood 
Destruction's sceptered slaves, and Folly's mitred 
brood ! 
When one, like them, but mightier far than they, 
The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, 
Rose : armies mingled in obscure array, 

Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred 
Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, [bowers 
Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours, 
Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ances- 
tral towers. 

XIII. 

England yet sleeps : was she not called of old ? 

Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder 
Vesuvius wakens iEtna, and the cold 

Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder : 
O'er the lit waves every iEolian isle 
From Pithecusa to Pelorus 
Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus : [us. 
They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er 
Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile 
And they dissolve ; but Spain's were links of 
Till bit to dust, by virtue's keenest file, [steel, 
Twins of a single destiny ! appeal 
To the eternal years enthroned before us, 
In the dim West ; impress us from a seal, 
All ye have thought and done ! Time cannot dare 
conceal. 

XIV. 

Tomb of Arminius ! render up thy dead 

Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, 
His soul may stream over the tyrant's head ! 

Thy victory shall be his epitaph, 
Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, 
King-deluded Germany, 
His dead spirit lives in thee. 
Why do we fear or hope \ thou art already free! 
x\nd thou, lost Paradise of this divine 

And glorious world ! thou flowery wilderness ! 
Thou island of eternity ! thou shrine 

Where desolation, clothed with loveliness, 
Worships the thing thou were ! Italy, 
Gather thy blood into thy heart ; repress 
The beasts who make their dens thy sacred 
palaces. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



2fi3 



O that the free would stamp the impious name 

Of * * * * into the dust ; or write it there, 
So that this blot upon the page of fame 

Were as a serpent's path, which the light air 
Erases, and the flat sands close behind ! 
Ye the oracle have heard : 
Lift the victory-flashing sword, 
And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word, 
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind 

Into a mass, irrefragably firm, 
The axes and the rods which awe mankind ; 
The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm 
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred; 
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term, 
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. 



O that the wise from their bright minds would kindle 
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, 
That the pale name of Pkiest might shrink and 
dwindle 
Into the hell from which it first was hurled, 
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure, 
Till human thoughts might kneel alone, 
Eacli before the judgment- throne 
Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown ! 
Othat the words which make the thoughts obscure 
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmer- 
ing dew 
From a white lake blot heaven's blue portraiture, 
Were stript of their thin masks and various hue, 
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own, 
Till in the nakedness of false and true 
They stand before their Lord, each to receive its 
due. 

XVII. 

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever 
Can be between the cradle and the grave, 
Crowned him the King of Life. vain endeavour! 

If on his own high will a willing slave, 
He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor. 
What if earth can clothe and feed 
Amplest millions at their need, 
And power in thought be as the tree within the 
Or what if art, an ardent intercessor, [seed ? 

Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, 

Checks the great mother stooping to caress her, 

And cries, give me, thy child, dominion 

Over all height and depth ? if Life can breed [groan, 

New wants, and wealth from those who toil and 

Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one. 



Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave 
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star 
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave, 

Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car 
Self -moving like cloud charioted by flame ; 
Comes she not, and come ye not, 
Rulers of eternal thought, 
To judge with solemn truth life's ill-apportioned lot? 
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame 

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be ? 
O, Liberty ! if such could be thy name 

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from 
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought [thee: 
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free 
Wept tears, and blood like tears ? The solemn 
harmony 



Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing 

To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn ; 
Then as a wild swan, when sublimely winging 

Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn, 
Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light 
On the heavy sounding plain, 
When the bolt has pierced its brain ; 
As summer clouds dissolve unburthened of their 
As a far taper fades with fading night ; [rain ; 

As a brief insect dies with dying day, 
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, 

Drooped ; o'er it closed the echoes far away 
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, 
As waves which lately paved his watery way 
1 lissroundadrowner's head in their tempestuous 
play. 



ARETHUSA. 

Arethusa arose 

From her couch of snows 

In the Acroceraunian mountains, — 
From cloud and from crag 
With many a jag, 

Shepherding her bright fountains. 
She leapt down the rocks 
With her rainbow locks 

Streaming among the streams ; — 
Her steps paved with green 
The downward ravine 

Which slopes to the western gleams : 
And gliding and springing, 
She went, ever singing, 

In murmurs as soft as sleep ; 

The Earth seemed to love her, 
And Heaven smiled above her, 

As she lingered towards the deep. 

Then Alpheus bold, 

On his glacier cold, 
With his trident the mountains strook ; 

And opened a chasm 

In the rocks ; — with the spasm 
All Erymanthus shook. 

And the black south wind 

It concealed behind 
The urns of the silent snow, 

And earthquake and thunder 

Did rend in sunder 
The bars of the springs below : 

The beard and the hair 

Of the river God were 
Seen through the torrent's sweep, 

As he followed the light 

Of the fleet nymph's flight 
To the brink of the Dorian deep. 

" Oh, save me ! Oh, guide me I 
And bid the deep hide me, 

For he grasps me now by the hair !" 
The loud Ocean heard, 
To its blue depth stirred, 

And divided at her prayer ; 
And under the water 
The Earth's white daughter 



2(H 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



Fled like • sunny beam ; 

Behind her desoended 

Her billows, unblended 
\\ ith the brackish Dorian stream: 

Like a gloomy stain 

On the emerald main 
Alpheus rushed behind, — 

\> an eagle pursuing 

A dove to its ruin 

Down the streams of the cloudy wind. 
Under the bowers 

Where the Ocean Powers 
Sit on their pearled thrones : 

Through the coral woods 

Of the weltering Hoods, 
Over heaps of unvalued stones ; 

Through the dim beams 

Which amid the streams 
Weave a net- work of coloured light ; 

And under the caves, 

Where the shadowy waves 
Are as green as the forest's night : — 

Outspeeding the shark, 

And the sword-fish dark, 
Under the ocean foam, 

And up through the rifts 

Of the mountain clifts 
They passed to their Dorian home. 

And now from their fountains 

In Enna's mountains, 
Down one vale where the morning basks, 

Like friends once parted 

Grown single-hearted, 
They ply their watery tasks. 

At sunrise they leap 

From their cradles steep 
In the cave of the shelving hill ; 

At noon-tide they flow 

Through the woods below 
And the meadows of Asphodel ; 

And at night they sleep 

In the rocking deep 
Beueath the Ortygian shore ; — 

Like spirits that lie 

In the azure sky 
When they love but live no more. 

Pisa, 1820. 



SONG OF PROSERPINE, 

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA. 

Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth, 
Thou from whose immortal bosom, 

Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, 
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, 

Breathe thine influence most divine 

On thine own child, Proserpine. 

If with mists of evening dew 

Thou dost nourish these young flowers 

Till they grow, in scent and hue, 
Fairest children of the hours, 

Breathe thine influence most divine 

On thine own child, Proserpine. 



HYMN OF APOLLO. 

'I'm', sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 
Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries 

From the broad moonlight of the sky, 

Panning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, — 

Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn, 

Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. 

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, 
I walk over the mountains and the waves, 

Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ; 
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire ; the caves 

Are filled with my bright presence, and the air 

1 ieaves the green earth to my embraces bare. 

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day ; 

All men who do or even imagine ill 
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray 

» ! ood minds and open actions take new might, 

Until diminished by the reign of night. 

1 feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, 
With their ethereal colours ; the Moon's globe 

And the pure stars in their eternal bowers 
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe ; 

Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine 

Are portions of one power, which is mine. 

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, 
Then with unwilling steps I wander down 

Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ; 

For grief that I depart they weep and frowns 

What look is more delightful than the smile 

With which I soothe them from the western isle ? 

I am the eye with which the Universe 
Beholds itself and knows itself divine ; 

All harmony of instrument or verse, 
All prophecy, all medicine are mine, 

All light of art or nature ; — to my song 

Victory and praise in their own right belong. 



HYMN OF PAN. 

From the forests and highlands 

We come, we come ; 
From the river-girt islands, 

Where loud waves are dumb 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 
The wind in the reeds and the rushes, 

The bees on the bells of thyme, 
The birds on the myrtle bushes, 
The cicale above in the lime, 
And the lizards below in the grass, 
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus * was, 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

Liquid Peneus was flowing, 

And all dark Tempe lay 
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 

The light of the dying day, 

* This and the former poem were written at the request 
of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of 
Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Tmolus for the 
prize in music. 



MISCELLANEOUS 



205 



Speeded with my sweet pipings. 
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, 
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, 

And the brink of the dewy caves, 
And all that did then attend and follow, 
Were silent with love, as you now, Apoilo, 
With envy of my sweet pipings. 

1 sung of the dancing stars, 

L sung of the dsedal Earth, 
And of Heaven — and the giant wars, 
And Love, and Death, and Birth, — 
And then I changed my pipings, — 
Singing how down the vale of Menalus 

I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed : 
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus ! 

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed 
All wept, as I think both ye now would, 
If envy or age had not frozen your blood, 
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. 



THE QUESTION. 

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, 

And gentle odours led my steps astray, 
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring 

Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 

But kissedit and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. 

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, 

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, 
The constellated flower that never sets ; 

Faint oxlips ; tender blue bells, at whose birth 
The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that 
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, [wets 
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. 

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 
Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May, 

And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine 
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day ; 

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, 

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; 

And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, 

Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. 

And nearer to the river's trembling edge 
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with 

And starry river buds among the sedge, [white, 
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, 

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge 

With moonlight beams of their own watery light ; 

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. 

Methcught that of these visionary flowers 
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way 

That the same hues, which in their natural bowers 
Were mingled or opposed, the like array 

Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours 
Within my hand, — and then, elate and gay, 

1 hastened to the spot whence I had come, 

That 1 might there present it ! — Oh ! to whom I 



THE TWO SPIRITS. 

AN ALLEGORY. 

FIRST SPIRIT. 

thou, who plumed with strong desire 
Wouldst float above the earth, beware ! 

A shadow tracks thy flight of fire — 

Night is coming ! 
Bright are the regions of the air, 
And among the winds and beams 

1 ( were delight to wander there — 

Night is coming '. 

SECOND SPIRIT. 

The deathless stars are bright above : 

If I would cross the shade at night, 

Within my heart is the lamp of love, 

And that is day ! 
And the moon will smile with gentle light 

On my golden plumes where'er they move ; 
The meteors will linger round my flight, 
And make night day. 

FIRST SPIRIT. 

But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken 
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain ; 
See the bounds of the air are shaken — 

Night is coming ! 
The red swift clouds of the hurricane 
Yon declining sun have overtaken, 
The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain — 
Night is coming ! 

SECOND SPIRIT. 

I see the light, and I hear the sound ; 

I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark, 
With the calm within and the light around 

Which makes night day : 
And thou, when the gloom is deep and star*, 

Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound, 
My moonlight flight thou then may'st mark 
On high, far away. 

Some say there is a precipice 

Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin 
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice 

'Mid Alpine mountains ; 
And that the languid storm, pursuing 

That winged shape, for ever flies 
Round those hoar branches, aye renewing 
Its aery fountains. 

Some say when nights are dry and clear, 

And the death-dews sleep on the morass, 
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller, 

Which make night day : 
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass 

Upborne by her wild and glittering hair, 
And when he awakes on the fragrant grass, 
He finds night day. 



2fi ; 



POEMS WRITTEN IN L820. 



LETTER 

TO MAK1A CilSHORNE. 



Loohork, July l, L880. 
Thk spider spreads her webs, whether she be 

In poet's tower, eellar, or barn, or tree ; 

The silkworm in the dark-green mulberry leaves 

His winding-sheet and cradle ever weaves ! 

So I, a thing whom moralists call wonu, 

Sit spinning still round tins decaying form, 

From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought — 

No net of words in garish colours wrought, 

To catch the idle buzzers of the day — 

But a soft cell, where, when that fades away, 

.Memory may clothe in wings my living name 

And feed it with the asphodels of fame, 

Which in those hearts which most remember me 

Grow, making love an immortality. 

Whoever should behold me now, I wist, 

Would think I were a mighty mechanist, 

Bent with sublime Archimedean art 

To breathe a soul into the iron heart 

Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, 

Which by the force of figured spells might win 

Its way over the sea, and sport therein ; 

For round the walls are hung dread engines, such 

As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch 

Ixion or the Titan : — or the quick 

Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, 

To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic ; 

Or those in philosophic councils met, 

Who thought to pay some interest for the debt 

They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation, 

By giving a faint foretaste of damnation 

To Shakspeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest 

Who made our land an island of the blest, 

When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire 

On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire : — 

With thumb-screws, wheels, with tooth and spike 

and jag, 
With fishes found under the utmost crag 
Of Cornwall, and the storm-encompassed isles, 
Where to the sky the rude sea seldom smiles 
Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn 
When the exulting elements in scorn 
Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay 
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled, prey, 
As panthers sleep : — and other strange and dread 
Magical forms the brick-floor overspread — 
Proteus transformed to metal did not make 
More figures, or more strange ; nor did he take 
Such shapes of unintelligible brass, 
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass 
Of tin and iron not to be understood, 
And forms of unimaginable wood, 
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood : 
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved 

blocks, 
The elements of what will stand the shocks 
Of wave and wind and time. — Upon the table 
More knacks and quips there be than I am able 
To cataloguise in this verse of mine : — 
A pretty bowl of wood— not full of wine, 
But quicksilver ; that dew which the gnomes drink 
When at their subterranean toil they swink, 



Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who 
Reply to them in lava-cry, halloo ! 
AmcI call out to the cities o'er their head, — 
Roofs, towns, and shrines, — the dying and the dead 
Crash through the chinks of earth — and then all 

quaff 
Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. 
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk — within 
The walnut-bowl it lies, veined and thin, 
In colour like the wake of light that stains 
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains 
The inmost shower of its white fire — the breeze 
Is still — blue heaven smiles over the pale seas. 
And in this bowl of quicksilver — for I 
Yield to the impulse of an infancy 
Outlasting manhood — I have made to float 
A rude idealism of a paper boat — 
A hollow screw with cogs— Henry will know 
The thing I mean, and laugh at me, — if so 
He fears not I should do more mischief. -Next 
Lie bills and calculations much perplext, 
With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint 
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. 
Then comes a range of mathematical 
I nstruments, for plans nautical and statical, 
A heap of rosin, a green broken glass 
With ink in it ; — a china cup that was 
What it will never be again, I think, 
A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink 
The liquor doctors rail at — and which I 
Will quaff in spite of them — and when we die 
We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, 
And cry out, — heads or tails ? where'er we be. 
Near that a dusty paint-box, some old hooks, 
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, 
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms, 
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, 
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray 
Of figures, — disentangle them who may. 
Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them he, 
And some odd volumes of old chemistry. 
Near them a most inexplicable thing, 
With least in the middle — I'm conjecturing 
How to make Henry understand ; — but — no, 
I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo, 
This secret in the pregnant womb of time, 
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. 

And here like some weird Archimage sit I, 

Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery, 

The self impelling steam-wheels of the mind 

Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind 

The gentle spirit of our meek reviews 

Into a powdery foam of salt abuse, 

Ruffling the ocean of their self-content : — 

I sit — and smile or sigh as is my bent, 

But not for them — Libeccio rushes round 

With an inconstant and an idle sound, 

I heed him more than them — the thunder-smoke 

Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak 

Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare ; 

The ripe corn under the undulating air 

Undulates like an ocean ; — and the vines 

Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines ; — 

The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill 

The empty pauses of the blast ; — the hill 

Looks hoary through the white electric rain, 

And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain 

The interrupted thunder howls ; above 

Oae chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of love 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



2fi7 



On tlie unquiet world ; — while such things are, 
1 low could one worth your friendship heed the war 
Of worms ? The shriek of the world's carrion 

jays, 
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise ? 

You are not here ! The quaint witch Memory sees 

In vacant chairs your absent images, 

Ami points where once you sat, and now should be, 

But are not I demand if ever we 

Shall meet as then we met ; — and she replies, 

Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes, 

" I know the past alone — but summon home 

My sister Hope, she speaks of all to come." 

But I, an old diviner, who know well 

Every false verse of that sweet oracle, 

Turned to the sad enchantress once again, 

And sought a respite from my gentle pain, 

In acting every passage o'er and o'er 

Of our communion. - How on the sea shore 

We watched the ocean and the sky together, 

Under the roof of blue Italian weather ; 

How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm, 

And felt the transverse lightning linger warm 

Upon my cheek : and how we often made 

Treats for each other, where good will outweighed 

The frugal luxury of our country cheer, 

As it well might, were it less firm and clear 

Than ours must ever be ;— and how we spun 

A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun 

Of this familiar life, which seems to be 

But is not, — or is but quaint mockery 

Of all we would believe ; or sadly blame 

The jarring and inexplicable frame 

Of this wrong world : — and then anatomize 

The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes 

Were closed in distant years ; — or widely guess 

The issue of the earth's great business, 

When we shall be as we no longer are ; 

Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war 

Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not ; or how 

You listened to some interrupted flow 

Of visionary rhyme ; — in joy and pain 

Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain, 

With little skill perhaps ; — or how we sought 

Those deepest wells of passion or of thought 

Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years, 

Staining the sacred waters with our tears ; 

Quenching a thh?st ever to be renewed ! 

Or how I, wisest lady ! then indued 

The language of a land which now is free, 

And winged with thoughts of truth and majesty, 

Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud, 

And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud, 

" My name is Legion !" — that majestic tongue, 

Which Calderon over the desert flung 

Of ages and of nations ; and which found 

An echo in our heai*ts, and with the sound 

Startled oblivion ; — thou wert then to me 

As is a nurse — when inarticulately 

A child would talk as its grown parents do. 

If living winds the rapid clouds pursue, 

If hawks chase doves through the aerial way, 

Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey, 

Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast * 

Out of the forest of the pathless past 

These recollected pleasures \ 

You are now 
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and How 



At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore 

Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. 

Yet in its depth what treasures ! You will see 

Your old friend Godwin, greater none than he ; 

Though fallen on evil times, yet will he stand, 

Among the spirits of our age and land, 

Before the dread tribunal of To-come 

The foremost, whilst rebuke stands pale and dumb. 

You will see Coleridge ; he who sits obscure 

In the exceeding lustre and the pure 

Intense irradiation of a mind, 

Which, with its own internal lustre blind, 

Flags wearily through darkness and despair — 

A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, 

A hooded eagle among blinking owls. 

You will see Hunt ; one of those happy souls 

Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom 

This world would smell like what it is — a tomb ; 

Who is, what others seem : — his room no doubt 

Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, 

With graceful flowers, tastefully placed about ; 

And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, 

And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung, 

The gifts of the most learned among some dozens 

Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins. 

And there is he with his eternal puns, 

Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns 

Thundering for money at a poet's door ; 

Alas ! it is no use to say, " I'm poor !" 

Or oft in graver mood, when he will look 

Things wiser than were ever said in book, 

Except in Shakspeare's wisest tenderness. 

You will see H — , and I cannot express 

His virtues, though I know that they are great, 

Because he locks, then barricades, the gate 

Within which they inhabit ; — of his wit, 

And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. 

He is a pearl within an oyster-shell, 

One of the richest of the deep. And there 

Is English P — with his mountain Fair 

Turned into a Flamingo, — that shy bird 

That gleams i'the Indian air. Have you not heard 

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, 

His best friends hear no more of him? but you 

Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, 

With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope 

Matched with his camelopard, his fine wit 

Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it ; 

A strain too learned for a shallow age, 

Too wise for selfish bigots ; — let his page, 

Which charms the chosen spirits of the age, 

Fold itself up for a serener clime 

Of years to come, and find its recompense 

In that just expectation. Wit and sense, 

Virtue and human knowledge, all that might 

Make this dull world a business of delight, 

Are all combined in Horace Smith.— And these, 

With some exceptions, which I need not teaze 

Your patience by descanting on, are all 

You and I know in London. 

I recall 
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night : 
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight 
Fills the void, hollow, universal air. 
What see you ? — Unpavilioned heaven is fair, 
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone, 
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan 
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep ; 
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep, 



268 



P0EM8 WRITTEN IN 1820. 



Piloted l>y the many-wandering blast, 

And therm stars rash through them, dim and 

fast. 
All this is beautiful iu every laud. 
Bat what see you beside i A shabby stand 
Of huekuey-eoaehes — a bviek house or wall 
Fencing some lonely court, white with the Bcrawl 
Of our unhappy politics ; — or worse — 
A wretched woman reeling by, whoso curse 
Mixed with the watehmaifs, partner of her trade, 
You must aeeept in place of serenade — 
Or yellow --haired Pollonia murmuring 
To Henry, some unutterable thing. 

1 see a chaos of green leaves and fruit 

Built round dark caverns, even to the root 

Of the living stems who feed them ; in whose 

bowers 
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers ; 
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn 
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne 
In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, 
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance 
Pale in the open moonshine ; but each one 
Under the dark trees seems a little sun, 
A meteor tamed ; a fixed star gone astray 
From the silver regions of the Milky- way. 
Afar the Contadino's song is heard, 
Rude, but made sweet by distance ; — and a bird 
Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet 
I know none else that sings so sweet as it 
At this late hour ;— and then all is still : — 
Now Italy or London, which you will ! 

Next winter you must pass with me ; I'll have 
My house by that time turned into a grave 
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care, 
And all the dreams which our tormentors are. 

that Hunt and were there, 

With every thing belonging to them fair ! — 

We will have books ; Spanish, Italian, Greek, 

And ask one week to make another week 

As like his father, as I'm unlike mine. 

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, 

Yet let's be merry ; we'll have tea and toast ; 

Custards for supper, and an endless host 

Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, 

And other such lady-like luxuries, — 

Feasting on which we will philosophise. 

And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's 

wood, 
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood. 
And then we'll talk ; — what shall we talk about ? 
Oh ! there are themes enough for many a bout 
Of thought-entangled descant ; as to nerves — 
With cones and parallelograms and curves 
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare 
To bother me, — when you are with me there. 
And they shall never more sip laudanum 
From Helicon or Himeros ;*— well, come, 
And in spite of * * * and of the devil, 
We'll make our friendly philosophic revel 
Outlast the leafless time ; — till buds and flowers 
Warn the obscure inevitable hours 
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew : — 
" To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new." 

* "ifiepos, from which the river Himera was named, 
is, with 6ome slight shade of difference, a synonyme of 
Love. 



TO MARY, 



(ON HBR OHJKCTING TO THK FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THF 
BOORS OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTBRBST.) 



How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten, 
(For vipers kill, though dead,) by some review, 

That you condemn these verses I have written, 
Because they tell no story, false or true ! 

What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten, 
May it not leap and play as grown cats do, 

Till its claws come ? Prithee, for this one time, 

Content thee with a visionary rhyme. 



What hand would crush the silken-winged fly, 
The youngest of inconstant April's minions, 

Because it cannot clirnb the purest sky, 

Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions I 

Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die, 
When day shall hide within her twilight pinions, 

The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile, 

Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile. 



To thy fair feet a winged Vision came, 

Whose date should have been longer than a day, 

And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame, 
And in thy sight its fading plumes display ; 

The watery bow burned in the evening flame, 
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way — 

And that is dead. — — O, let me not believe 

That any thing of mine is fit to live ! 



Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years 
Considering and retouching Peter Bell ; 

Watering his laurels with the killing tears 
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to hell 

Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the 
spheres 
Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well 

May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil 

The over-busy gardener's blundering toil. 



My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature 
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise 

Clothes for our grandsons — but she matches Peter, 
Though he took nineteen years, and she three 
days 

In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre 
She wears ; he, proud as dandy with his stays, 

Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress 

Like King Lear's " looped and windowed ragged- 
ness." 



If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow, 
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate 

Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow : 

A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at ; 

In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello, 

If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate 

Can shrive you of that sin, — if sin there be 

In love, when it becomes idolatry. 



Tin: witch or atlas. 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth 
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, 

Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth 
All those bright natures which adorned its 
prime, 

And left us nothing to believe in, worth 
The pains of putting into learned rhyme, 

A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain 

Within a cavern by a secret fountain. 



Her mother was one of the Atlantides : 
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden 

In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas 
So fail* a creature, as she lay enfolden 

I n the warm shadow of her loveliness ; — 
He kissed her with his beams, and made all 
golden 

The chamber of grey rock in which she lay — 

She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away. 



'Tis said, she was first changed into a vapour, 
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit, 

Like splendour- winged moths about a taper, 
Round the red west when the sun dies in it : 

And then into a meteor, such as caper 
On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit ; 

Then, into one of those mysterious stars 

Which hide themselves between the Earth and 
Mars. 

IV. 

Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent 
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden 

With that bright sign the billows to indent 
The sea-deserted sand : like children chidden, 

At her command they ever came and went : — 
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden, 

Took shape and motion : with the living form 

Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm. 



A lovely lady garmented in light 

From her own beauty — deep her eyes, as are 
Two openings of unfathomable night 

Seen through a tempest's cloven roof; — her hair 
Dark — the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, 

Picturing her form ; — her soft smiles shone afar, 
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew 
All living things towards this wonder new. 



And first the spotted camelopard came, 
And then the wise and fearless elephant ; 

Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame 
Of his own volumes intervolved ; — all gaunt 

And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame. 
They drank before her at her sacred fount ; 

And every beast of beating heart grew bold, 

Such gentleness and power even to behold. 



The blinded lioness tod forth her young, 

That she might teach them how t lie v should forego 

Their inborn thirst of death ; the paid unstrung 
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know 

With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue 
How he might be as gentle as the doe. 

The magic circle of her voice and eyes 

All savage natures did iruparadise. 



And old Silenus, shaking a green stick 
Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew 

Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick 
Cicada are, drunk with the noonday dew : 

And Driope and Faunus followed quick, 

Teazing the God to sing them something new, 

Till in this cave they found the lady lone, 

Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone. 



And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there, 

And though none saw him, — through the adamant 

Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air, 
And through those living spirits, like a want, 

He passed out of his everlasting lair 

Where the quick heart of the great world doth 

And felt that wondrous lady all alone, — [p^nt, 

And she felt him upon her emerald throne. 



And every nymph of stream and spreading tree, 
And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks, 

Who drives her white waves over the green sea ; 
And Ocean, with the brine on his grey locks, 

And quaint Priapus with his company, [rocks 
All came, much wondering how the enwombed 

Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth ; — 

Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth. 



The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came, 
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamaut — 

Their spirits shook within them, as a flame 
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt : 

Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name, 
Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt 

Wet clefts, — and lumps neither alive nor dead, 

Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed. 



For she was beautiful : her beauty made 

The bright world dim, and everything beside 

Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade : 
No thought of living spirit could abide 

(Which toner looks had ever been betrayed,) 
On any object in the world so wide, 

On any hope within the circling skies, 

But on her form, and in her inmost eyes. 



W T hich when the lady knew, she took her spindle 
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three 

Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle 
The clouds and waves and mountains with, and she 

As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle 
In the belated moon, wound skilfully ; 

And with these threads a subtle veil she wove — 

A shadow for the splendour of her love. 






«70 



POEMS W KITTEN IN 1820. 



The deep reesssai of her odorous dwelling 
Were stored with magic treasures sounds of air 

Which had the power all spirits of compelling, 
Folded in cells of crystal silence there ; 

Soah as we hear in youth, and think the feeling 
Will never die- yet ere we are aware, 

The feeling and the sound arc fled and gone, 

And the regret they leave remains alone. 



And there lay visions swift, and sweet, and quaint, 
Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis ; 

Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint 
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss 

It is its work to bear to many a saint 

"Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is, 

Even Love's — and others white, green, grey, and 

And of all shapes — and each was at her beck, [black, 



And odours in a kind of aviary 

Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, 

Clipt in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy 

Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet 

As bats at the wired window of a dairy, [slept ; 
They beat their vans ; and each was an adept, 

When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds, 

To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds. 



At first she lived alone in this wild home, 
And her thoughts were each a minister. 

Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam. 
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire, 

To work whatever purposes might come 

Into her mind : such power her mighty Sire 

Had girt them with, whether to fly or run, 

Through all the regions which he shines upon. 



The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades, 
Oreads and Naiads with long weedy looks, 

Offered to do her bidding through the seas, 
Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks, 

And far beneath the matted roots of trees, 
And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks, 

So they might live for ever in the light 

Of her sweet presence — each a satellite. 



" This may not be," the wizard maid replied ; 

" The fountains where the Naiades bedew 
Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried ; 

The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew 
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide ; 

The boundless ocean, like a drop of dew 
Will be consumed — the stubborn centre must 
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust. 






And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might 
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, 

And change eternal death into a night 

Of glorious dreams — or if eyes needs must weep 

Could make their tears all wonder and delight, 
She in her crystal vials did closely keep : 

If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said 

The living were not envied of the dead. 



Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, 
The works of some Saturnian Arch image, 

Which taught the expiations at whose price 
Men from the Gods might win that happy age 

Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice ; [rage 

And which might quench the earth-consuming 

Of gold and blood — till men should live and move 

Harmonious as the sacred stars above. 



And how all things that seem untameable, 
Not to be checked and not to be confined, 

Obey the spells of wisdom's wizard skill ; 

Time, Earth, and Fire — the Ocean and the Wind, 

And all their shapes — and man's imperial will ; 
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind 

The inmost lore of Love — let the profane 

Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. 



And wondrous works of substances unknown, 
To which the enchantment of her father's power 

Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone, 
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower ; 

Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone 
In their own golden beams — each like a flower, 

Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light 

Under a cypress in a starless night. 



" And ye with them will perish one by one : 
If I must sigh to think that this shall be, 

If I must weep when the surviving Sun 
Shall smile on your decay — Oh, ask not me 

To love you till your little race is run ; 

I cannot die as ye must — over me [ye dwell 

Your leaves shall glance — the streams in which 

Shall be my paths henceforth, and so farewell !" 



She spoke and wept : the dark and azure well 
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears, 

And every little circlet where they fell, 

Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres 

And intertangled lines of light : — a knell 
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears 

From those departing Forms, o'er the serene 

Of the white streams and of the forest green. 



All day the wizard lady sat aloof, 

Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity, 

Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof; 
Or broidering the pictured poesy 

Of some high tale upon her growing woof, 

Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye 

In hues outshining heaven — and ever she 

Added some grace to the wrought poesy. 



While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece 
Of sandal-wood, rare gums, and cinnamon ; 

Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is ; 
Each flame of it is as a precious stone 

Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this 
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon. 

The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand 

She held a woof thai dimmed the burning brand. 



TIIK WITCH OF ATLAS. 



271 



This lady never slept, but lay in trance 
All night within the fountain — as in sleep. 

Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance : 
Through the green splendour of the water deep 

She saw the constellations reel and dance 
Like fire-flies — and withal did ever keep 

The tenour of her contemplations calm, 

With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm. 

XXIX. 

And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended 
From the white pinnacles of that cold hill, 

She passed at dewfall to a space extended, 
Where, in a lawn of flowering asphodel 

Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended, 
There yawned an inextinguishable well 

Of crimson fire, full even to the brim, 

And overflowing all the margin trim. 



Within the which she lay when the fierce war 
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor 

Tn many a mimic moon and bearded star, 

O'er woods and lawns — the serpent heard it flicker 

In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar — 
And when the windless snow descended thicker 

Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came 

Melt on the surface of the level flame. 

XXXI. 

She had a Boat which some say Vulcan wrought 
For Venus, as the chariot of her star ; 

But it was found too feeble to be fraught 

With all the ardours in that sphere which are, 

And so she sold it, and Apollo bought 
And gave it to this daughter : from a car 

Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat 

Which ever upon mortal stream did float. 



And others say, that, when but three hours old, 
The first-born Love out of his cradle leapt, 

And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold, 
And like a horticultural adept, 

Stole a strange seed, and wrapt it up in mould, 
And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept 

Watering it all the summer with sweet dew, 

And with his wings fanning it as it grew. 



The plant grew strong and green — the snowy flower 
Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began 

To turn the light and dew by inward power 
To its own substance : woven tracery ran 

Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er 
The solid rind, like a leaf's veined fan, 

Of which Love scooped this boat, and with soft 

Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean, [motion 



This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit 
A living spirit within all its frame, 

Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. 

Couched on the fountain like a panther tame, 

One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit ; 
Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame, 

Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought, — 

In joyous expectation lay the boat. 



Then by Btrange art she kneaded fire and snow 
Together, tempering the repugnant mass 

With liquid love — all things together grow 
Through which the harmony of love can pass 

And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow 
A living Image, which did far surpass 

In beauty that bright shape of vital stone 

Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion. 



A sexless thing it was, and in its growth 
It seemed to have developed no defect 

Of either sex, yet all the grace of both, — 

In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked ; 

The bosom lightly swelled with its full youth, 
The countenance was such as might select 

Some artist that his skill should never die, 

Imaging forth such perfect purity. 



From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings, 
Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere, 

Tipt with the speed of liquid lightenings, 
Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere : 

She led her creature to the boiling springs 

Where the light boat was moored, and said — "Sit 

And pointed to the prow, and took her seat [here !" 

Beside the rudder with opposing feet. 



And down the streams which clove those mountains 
Around their inland islets, and amid [vast 

The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast 
Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid 

In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed ; 
By many a star-surrounded pyramid 

Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky, 

And caverns yawning round unfathomably. 



The silver noon into that winding dell, 

With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops, 

Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell ; 

A green and glowing light, like that which drops 

From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell, 
When earth over her face night's mantle wraps ; 

Between the severed mountains lay on high 

Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky. 



And ever as she went, the Image lay 

With folded wings and unawakened eyes ; 

And o'er its gentle countenance did play 
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies, 

Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, 
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs 

Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain, 

They had aroused from that full heart and brain. 



And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud 
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went : 

Now lingering on the pools, in which abode 
The calm and darkness of the deep, content 

In which they paused ; now o'er the shallow road 
Of white and dancing waters, all besprent 

With sand and polished pebbles : — mortal boat 

In such a shallow rapid could not float. 



w 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



And down tho earthquaking cataracts, which shiver 

Their snow-like waters into golden air. 
Or under chasms unfathomable ever 

Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear 
A subterranean portal for the river, 

It tied — the circling sunbows did upbear 
Its tall down the hoar precipice of spray, 
Lighting it far upon its lampless way. 



And when the wizard lady would ascend 
The labyrinths of some many-winding vale. 

Which to the inmost mountain upward tend — 
She called " Hermaphroditus !" and the palo 

And heavy hue which slumber could extend 
Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale 

A rapid shadow from a slope of grass, 

Into the darkness of the stream did pass. 



And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions ; 

With stars of fire spotting the stream below 
And from above into the Sun's dominions 

Flinging a glory, like the golden glow 
In which spring clothes her emerald- winged ' 

All interwoven with fine feathery snow [minions, 
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime, 
With which frost paints the pines in winter time. ! 



And then it wimiowed the Elysian air 
Which ever hung about that lady bright, 

With its ethereal vans — and speeding there, 
Like a star up the torrent of the night, 

Or a swift eagle in the morning glare 

Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight? 

The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings, 

Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs. 



The water flashed like sunlight by the prow 
Of a noon- wandering meteor flung to Heaven ; 

The still air seemed as if its waves did flow 

In tempest down the mountains, — loosely driven 

The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro ; 
Beneath, the billows having vainly striven 

Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel 

The swift and steady motion of the keel. 



Or, when the weary moon was in the wane, 

Or in the noon of interlunar night, 
The lady-witch in visions could not chain 

Her spirit ; but sailed forth under the light 
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain 

Hisstorm-outspeeding wings, th' Hermaphrodite ; 
She to the Austral waters took her way, 
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocona. 



Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, 
Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake t 

With the Antarctic constellations paven, 
Canopus and his crew, lay th' Austral lake — 

There she would build herself a windless haven 
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make 

The bastions of the storm, when through the sky 

The spirits of the tempest thundered by. 



A haven, beneath whose translucent floor 
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably, 

And around which the solid vapours hoar, 
Based on the level waters, to the sky 

Lifted their dreadful crags ; and like a shore 
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly 

Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey, 

And hanging crags, many a cove and bay. 



And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash 

Of the winds' scourge, foamed like a wounded 

And the incessant hail with stony cl: sh [thing ; 
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing 

Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash 
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering 

Fragment of inky thunder-smoke — this haven 

Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven. 



On which that lady played her many pranks, 
Circling the image of a shooting star, 

Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks 

Outspeeds the Antelopes which speediest are, 

In her light boat ; and many quips and cranks 
She played upon the water ; till the car 

Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, 

To journey from the misty east began. 



; And then she called out of the hollow turrets 

Ofthose high clouds, white,golden,and vermilion, 
j The armies of her ministering spirits — 
In mighty legions million after million 
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits 

On meteor flags ; and many a proud pavilion, 
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere, 
They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere. 



They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen 

Of woven exhalations, underlaid 
With lambent Kghtning-fire, as may be seen 

A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid 
With crimson silk — cressets from the serene 

Hung there, and on the water for her tread, 
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn, 
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon. 



And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught 
Upon those wandering isles of aery dew, 

Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not, 
She sate, and heard all that had happened new 

Between the earth and moon since they had brought 
The last intelligence — and now she grew 

Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night — 

And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. 



These were tame pleasures. — She would often climb 
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack 

Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, 
And like Arion on the dolphin's back 

Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft time 
Following the serpent lightning's winding track. 

She ran upon the platforms of the wind, 

And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind. 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



273 



And sometimes to those streams of upper air, 
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round, 

She would ascend, and win the spirits thero 
To let her join their chorus. Mortals found 

That on those days the sky was calm and fair, 
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound 

Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed, 

And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last. 



But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, 
To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads 

Egypt and Ethiopia, from the steep 
Of utmost Axume, until he spreads, 

Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep, 
His waters on the plain : and crested heads 

Of cities and proud temples gleam amid, 

And many a vapour-belted pyramid. 



By Mceris and the Mareotid lakes, [floors ; 

Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber 
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes, 

Or charioteering ghastly alligators, 
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes 

Of those huge forms . — within the brazen doors 
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast, 
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast. 



And where within the surface of the river 
The shadows of the massy temples lie, 

And never are erased — but tremble ever 

Like things which every cloud can doom to die, 

Through lotus-pav'n canals, and wheresoever 
The works of man pierced that serenest sky 

With tombs, and towers, and fane, 'twas her delight 

To wander in the shadow of the night. 



With motion like the spirit of that wind 

Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet 

Past through the peopled haunts of human kind, 
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet, 

Through fane and palace-court and labyrinth mined 
With many a dark and subterranean street 

Under the Nile ; through chambers high and deep 

She past, observing mortals in their sleep. 



A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see 
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. 

Here lay two sister-twins in infancy ; 

There a lone youth who in his dreams did weep ; 

Within, two lovers linked innocently 

In their loose locks which over both did creep 

Like ivy from one stem ; — and there lay calm, 

Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm. 



But other troubled forms of sleep she saw, 
Not to be mirrored in a holy song, 

Distortions foul of supernatural awe, 
And pale imaginings of visioned wrong, 

And all the code of custom's lawless law 
Written upon the brows of old and young : 

" This," said the wizard maiden, " is the strife 

Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life." 



And little did the sight disturb her soul — 
We, the weak mariners of that wide lake, 

Where'er its shores extend or billows roll, 
Our course unpiloted and starless make 

O'er its wide surface to an unknown goal, — 
But she in the calm depths her way could take, 

Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide, 

Beneath the weltering of the restless tide. 



And she saw princes couched under the glow 
Of sunlike gems ; and round each temple-court 

In dormitories ranged, row after row, 
She saw the priests asleep, — all of one sort, 

For all were educated to be so. 

The peasants in their huts, and in the port 

The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, 

And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. 



And all the forms in which those spirits lay, 
Were to her sight like the diaphanous 

Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array 

Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us 

Only their scorn of all concealment : they 
Move in the light of their own beauty thus. 

But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, 

And little thought a Witch was looking on them. 



She all those human figures breathing there 
Beheld as living spirits — to her eyes 

The naked beauty of the soul lay bare, 

And often through a rude and worn disguise 

She saw the inner form most bright and fair — 
And then, — she had a charm of strange device, 

Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, 

Could make that spirit mingle with her own. 



Alas, Aurora ! what wouldst thou have given 
For such a charm, when Tithon became grey \ 

Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven 
Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina 

Had half (oh ! why not all ?) the debt forgiven 
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pav, 

To any witch who would have taught you it ? 

The Heliad doth not know its value yet. 



'Tis said in after times her spirit free 

Knew what love was, and felt itself alone — 

But holy Dian could not chaster be 
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion, 

Than now this lady — like a sexless bee 

Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none — 

Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden 

Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen. 



To those she saw most beautiful, she gave 

Strange panacea in a crystal bowl. 
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, 

And lived thenceforth as if some control, 
Mightier than life, were in them ; and the grave 

Of such, when death oppressed the weary son'.', 
Was a green and over-arching bower 
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. 



POEMS \Y KITTEN IN 1820. 



For on the night that they were buried, she 

•■.oil the embalmers 1 ruining, and shook 
Tin- light out of the funeral lamps, to bo 

A mimie day within that deatny nook; 
Ami she unwound the woven imagery 

Of second childhood's swaddling bands, ami rook 
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niohe, 

Ami throw it with contempt into a ditch. 



And there the body lay, age after age, 

Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, 

Like one asleep in a green hermitage, 

With gentle sloop about its eyelids playing, 

And living in its dreams beyond the rage 

Of death or life ; while they were still arraying 

In liveries ever new the rapid, blind, 

And fleeting generations of mankind. 



And she would write strange dreams upon the brain 
Of those who were less beautiful, and make 

All harsh and crooked purposes more vain 
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake 

Which the sand covers, — all his evil gain 

The miser in such dreams would rise and shake 

Into a beggar's lap ; — the lying scribe 

Would his own lies betray without a bribe. 



The priests would write an explanation full, 
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, 

How the god Apis really was a bull, 

And nothing more ; and bid the herald stick 

The same against the temple doors, and pull 
The old cant down ; they licensed all to speak 

Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, 

By pastoral letters to each diocese. 



The king would dress an ape up in his crown 
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, 

And on the right hand of the sunlike throne 
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat 

The chatterings of the monkey. — Every one 
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet 

Of their great Emperor when the morning came; 

And kissed — alas, how many kiss the same ! 



The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, 
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism, [and 

Round the red anvils you might see them stand 
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm, 

Beating their swords to ploughshares ; — in a band 
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism 

Free through the streets of Memphis ; much, I wis, 

To the annoyance of king Amasis. 



And timid lovers who had been so coy, 

They hardly knew whether they loved or not, 

Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, 
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought ; 

And when next day the maiden and the boy 
Met one another, both, like sinners caught, 

Blushed at the thing which each believed was 

Only in fancy — till the tenth moon shone ; [done 



lxxvii. 
And then the Witch wotdd let them take no ill: 

Of many thousand schemes which lovers find 
The Witch found one, — and so they took their fill 

Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. 
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, 

Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from 
She did unite again with visions clear [mind ! 

Of deep affection and of truth sincere. 

lxxvih. 
These were the pranks she played among the cities 

Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites 
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties, 

To do her will, and show their subtle slights, 
I will declare another time ; for it is 

A tale more fit for the weird winter nights — 
Than for these garish summer days, when we 
Scarcely believe much more than we can see. 



ODE TO NAPLES *. 



EPODE I. a. 

I stood within the city disinterred + ; 

And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot- 
falls 
Of spirits passing through the streets ; and heard 
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals 
Thrill through those roofless halls ; 
The oracular thunder penetrating shook 

The listening soul in my suspended blood ; 
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke — 
I felt, but heard not : — through white columns 
The isle-sustaining Ocean flood, [glowed 

A plane of light between two heavens of azure : 
Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre 
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure 
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; 
But every living lineament was clear 
As in the sculptor's thought ; and there 
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, 

Like winter leaves o'ergrownby moulded snow, 
Seemed only not to move and grow 
Because the crystal silence of the air 

Weighed on their life ; even as the Power divine, 
Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine. 

EPODE II. a. 

Then gentle winds arose, 
With many a mingled close 
Of wild iEolian sound and mountain odour keen ; 
And where the Baian ocean 
Welters with air-like motion, 
Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, 
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves, 
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere 
Floats o'er the Elysian realm, 
It bore me, like an Angel o'er the waves 
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air 

* The Author has connected many recollections of hia 
visit to Pompeii and Baiae with the enthusiasm excited by 
the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional 
Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of pic- 
turesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory 
Epodes, which depicture the scenes and some of the 
majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene 
of this animating event.— Author's Note. 

t Pompeii. 



ODE TO NAPLES. 



No storm can overwhelm ; 

I Bailed where ever flows 

Under the calm Serene 

A spirit of deep emotion, 

From the unknown graves 

Of the dead kings of Melody*. 
Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm 
The horizontal aether ; heaven stript bare 
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow 
Made the invisible water white as snow ; 
From that Typhaean mount, lnarime, 
There streamed a sunlit vapour, like the standard 

Of some ethereal host ; 

Whilst from all the coast, 
Louder andlouder, gathering round, there wandered 
Over the oracular woods and divine sea 
Prophesyings which grew articulate — 
They seize me— I must speak them; — be they fate ! 

strophe a. I. 
Naples ! thou Heart of men, which ever pantest 

Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven ! 
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest 

The mutinous air and sea ! they round thee, even 
As sleep round Love, are driven ! 
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise 

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained ! 
Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice, 
Which armed Victory offers up unstained 
To Love, the flower-enchained ! 
Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, 
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free, 
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail. 
Hail, hail, all hail ! 

STROPHE j8. 2. 

Thou youngest giant birth, 

Which from the groaning earth 
Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale ! 

Last of the Intercessors 

Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors 
Pleadest before God's love ! Arrayed in Wisdom's 
mail, 

Wave thy lightning lance in mirth ; 

Nor let thy high heart fail, 
Though from their hundred gates the leagued 
Oppressors, 

With hurried legions move ! 

Hail, hail, all hail ! 

ANTISTROPHE a. 

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme 

Freedom and thee 1 thy shield is as a mirror 
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce 
gleam 

To turn his hungi*y sword upon the wearer ; 
A new Actseon's error 
Shall theirs have been — devoured by their own 

Be thou like the imperial Basilisk, [hounds ! 
Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds ! 

Gaze on oppression, till, at that dread risk 

Aghast, she pass from the Earth's disk ; 
Fear not, but gaze — for freemen mightier grow, 
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe. 

If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail, 

Thou shalt be great. — All hail ! 

ANTISTROPHE j8. 2. 

From Freedom's form divine, 

From Nature's inmost shrine, 

* Homer and Virgil. 



Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil : 

O'er Ruin desoiate, 

O'er Falsehood's fallen state, 
Sit thou sublime, unawed ; be the Destroyer pale ! 

And equal laws be thine, 

And winged words let sail, 
Freighted with truth even from the throne of God : 

That wealth, surviving fate, 

Be thine.— All hail ! 

ANTISTROPHE O. 7. 

Didst thou not start to hear Spam's thrilling pa an 

From land to land re-echoed solemnly, 
Till silence became music ? From the JEeczm * 
To the cold Alps, eternal Italy 
Starts to hear thine ! The Sea 
Which paves the desert streets of Venice, laughs 

In light and music ; widowed Genoa wan, 
By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs, 
Murmuring, where is Doria ? fair Milan, 
Within whose veins long ran 
The viper's f palsying venom, lifts her heel 
To bruise his head. The signal and the seal 
(If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail) 
Art Thou of all these hopes. — hail ! 

ANTISROPHE j8. 7. 

Florence ! beneath the sun, 

Of cities fairest one, 
Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expeeta- 

From eyes of quenchless hope [tion : 

Rome tears the priestly cope, 
As ruling once by power, so now by admiration, — 

An athlete stript to run 

From a remoter station 
For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore : — 
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, 
So now may Fraud and Wrong ! hail ! 

epode I. j8. 
Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms 

Arrayed against the ever-living Gods ? 
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms 
Bursting their inaccessible abodes 

Of crags and thunder clouds ? 
See ye the banners blazoned to the day, 

Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride ? 
Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, 

The Serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide 
With iron light is dyed, 
The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions 

Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating ; 
An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions 
And lawless slaveries, — down the aerial regions 
Of the white Alps, desolating, 
Famished wolves that bide no waiting, 
Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, 
Trampling our columned cities into dust, 

Their dull and savage lust 
On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating — [hoary 
They come ! The fields they tread look black and 
With fire— from their red feet the streams run 



gory 



EPODE II. )8. 

Great Spirit, deepest Love ! 
Which rulest and dost move 



* jEaea, the Island of Circe. 
t The viper was the armorial device of the Visennii, 
tyrants of Milan. 

t 2 









POEMS WRITTEN fN 1820. 



All tilings which live ami are. within the Italian 
Whospreadest heaven around it, [shore ; 

Whoso woods, rooks, wavos, surround it; 

Who sittost in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor, 

Spirit of beauty ! at whoso soft command 

The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison ! 
From the Earth's bosom chill ; 
hid those beams be each a blinding brand 
Of lightning ! hid thoso showers ho dews of poison ! 
Hid the Earth's plenty kill ! 
Bid thy bright Heaven above 
Whilst' light and darkness bound it, 
Bo their tomb who planned 
To make it ours and thine ! 
Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill 
And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon 
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire — 
Bo man's high hope and unextinct desire 
The instrument to work thy will divine ! 
Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leo- 
And frowns and fears from Thee, [pards, 
Would not more swiftly flee, 
Than Celtic wolvesfrom the Ausonian shepherds. — 
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine 
Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be 
This City of thy worship, ever free ! 



AUTUMN : 

A DIRGE. 

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, 

The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are 

And the year [dying, 

On the earth her death -bed, in a shroud of leaves 

Is lying. [dead, 

Come, months, come away, 

From November to May, 

In your saddest array ; 

Follow the bier 

Of the dead cold year, 
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. 

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, 
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling 

For the year ; 
The blithe sw r allows are flown, and the lizards each 
gone 
To his dwelling ; 
Come, months, come away ; 
Put on white, black, and grey, 
Let your light sisters play — 
Ye, follow the bier 
Of the dead cold year, 
And make her grave green with tear on tear. 



THE WANING MOON. 



And like a dying lady, lean and pale, 
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil, 
Out of her chamber, led by the insane 
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, 
The moon arose up in the murky earth, 
A white and shapeless mass. 



DEATH. 



Death is here, and death is there, 
Death is busy everywhere, 
All around, within, beneath, 
Above is death — and we are death. 



! 



Death has set his mark and seal 
On all we are and all we feel, 
On all we know and all we fear, ) 



First our pleasures die — and then 
Our hopes, and then our fears — and when 
These are dead, the debt is due, 
Dust claims dust — and we die too. 

All things that we love and cherish, 
Like ourselves, must fade and perish ; 
Such is our rude mortal lot — 
Love itself would, did they not. 



LIBERTY. 

The fiery mountains answer each other ; 
Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone ; 
The tempestuous oceans awake one another, 
And the ice-rocks are shaken round winter's 
throne, 
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. 

From a single cloud the lightning flashes, 
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around ; 
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, 
An hundred are shuddering and tottering ; the 
sound 
Is bellowing underground. 

But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, 
And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp ; 
Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean ; thy stare 
Makes blind the volcanoes ; the sun's bright lamp 
To thine is a fen-fire damp. 

From billow and mountain and exhalation 
The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast ; 
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation, 
From city to hamlet, thy dawning is cast, — 
And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night 
In the van of the morning light. 



TO THE MOON. 

Art thcu pale for weariness 
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, 

Wandering companionless 
Among the stars that have a different birth,— 
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye 
That finds no object worth its constancy ? 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



277 



SUMMER AND WINTER. 



It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, 
Towards the end of the sunny month of June, 
When the north wind congregates in crowds 
The floating mountains of the silver clouds 
From the horizon — and the stainless sky 
Opens beyond them like eternity. 
All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds, 
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds ; 
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze, 
And the firm foliage of the larger trees. 

It was a winter such as when birds die 
In the deep forests ; and the fishes lie 
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes 
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes 
A wrinkled clod, as hard as brick ; and when, 
Among their children, comfortable men 
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold : 
Alas ! then for the homeless beggar old ! 



THE TOWER OF FAMINE 



Amid the desolation of a city, 

Which was the cradle, and is now the grave, 

Of an extinguished people ; so that pity 

Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave, 

There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built 

Upon some prison- homes, whose dwellers rave 

For bread, and gold, and blood : pain, linked to 

Agitates the light flame of their hours, [guilt, 

Until its vital oil is spent or spilt : 

There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers 

And sacred domes ; each marble-ribbed roof, 

The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers 

Of solitary wealth ! the tempest-proof 

Pavilions of the dark Italian air 

Are by its presence dimmed — they stand aloof, 

And are withdrawn — so that the world is bare, 

As if a spectre, wrapt in shapeless terror, 

Amid a company of ladies fair 

Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror 

Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue, 

The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error, 

Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew. 



AN ALLEGORY. 



A portal as of shadowy adamant 

Stands yawning on the highway of the life 
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt ; 

Around it rages an unceasing strife 
Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt 
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high 
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. 

* At Pisa there still exists the prison of Ugolino, which 
goes hy the name of "La Torre della Fame:" in the 
adjoining building the galley-slaves are confined. It is 
situated near the Ponte alMare on the Amo. 



And many passed it by with careless tread, 
Not knowing that a shadowy [ ] 

Tracks every traveller even to where the dead 
Wait peacefully for their companion new ; 

But others, by more curious humour led, 
Pause to examine, — these are very few, 

And they learn little there, except to know 

That shadows follow them where'er they go. 



THE WORLD'S WANDERERS. 



Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light 
Speed thee in thy fiery flight, 
In what cavern of the night 

Will thy pinions close now ? 

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey 
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, 
In what depth of night or day 
Seekest thou repose now ? 

Weary wind, who wanderest 
Like the world's rejected guest, 
Hast thou still some secret nest 
On the tree or billow ? 



SONNET. 

Ye hasten to the dead ! What seek ye there, 

Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes 

Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear \ 

O thou quick Heart, which pantest to possess 

All that anticipation feigneth fair ! 

Thou vainly curious Mind which wouldest guess 

Whence thou didst come,and whither thou rcayestgo, 

And that which never yet was known wouldst 

know — 
Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press 
With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path, 
Seeking alike from happiness and woe 
A refuge in the cavern of grey death ? 
O heart, and mind, and thoughts ! What thing 

do you 
Hope to inherit in the grave below ? 



LINES TO A REVIEWER. 

Alas ! good friend, what profit can you see 
In hating such a hateless thing as me ? 
There is no sport in hate where all the rage 
Is on one side. In vain would you assuage 
Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, 
In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile 
Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate. 
Oh conquer what you cannot satiate ! 
For to your passion I am far more coy 
Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy 
In winter noon. Of your antipathy 
If I am the Narcissus, you are free 
To pine into a sound with hating me. 






EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS of 18-20. 



NOTE ON THE POEMS OF J 820. 

BY THE EDITOR. 



We spent the latter part of the year 1819 in 
Florence, where Shelley passed several hours 
daily in the Gallery, and made various notes on 
its ancient works of art. His thoughts were a 
good deal taken up also by the project of a steam- 
boat, undertaken by a friend, an engineer, to ply 
between Leghorn and Marseilles, for which he 
supplied a sum of money. This was a sort of 
plan to delight Shelley, and he was greatly disap- 
pointed when it was thrown aside. 

There was something in Florence that disagreed 
excessively with his health, and he suffered far 
more pain than usual ; so much so that we left 
it sooner than we intended, and removed to Pisa, 
where we had some friends, and, above all, where 
we could consult the celebrated Vacca, as to the 
cause of Shelley's sufferings. He, like every other 
medical man, could only guess at that, and gave 
little hope of immediate relief ; he enjoined him 
to abstain from all physicians and medicine, and 
to leave his complaint to nature. As he had 
vainly consulted medical men of the highest 
repute in England, he was easily persuaded to 
adopt this advice. Pain and ill-health followed 
him to the end, but the residence at Pisa agreed 
with him better than any other, and there in con- 
sequence we remained. 

In the spring we spent a week or two near 
Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, 
who were absent on a journey to England. — It 
was on a beautiful summer evening, while wan- 
dering among the lanes, whose myrtle hedges 
were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard 
the carolling of the sky-lark, which inspired one 
of the most beautiful of his poems. He addressed 
the letter to Mrs. Gisborne from this house, which 
was hers ; he had made his study of the workshop 
of her son, who was an engineer. Mrs. Gisborne 
had been a friend of my father in her younger days. 
She was a lady of great accomplishments, and 



charming from her frank and affectionate nature. 
She had the most intense love of knowledge, a 
delicate and trembling sensibility, and preserved 
freshness of mind, after a life of considerable 
adversity. As a favourite friend of my father we 
had sought her with eagerness, and the most open 
and cordial friendship was established between us. 

We spent the summer at the baths of San 
Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths 
were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous 
irritability. We made several excursions in the 
neighbourhood. The country around is fertile ; 
and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges 
of near hills and more distant mountains. The 
peasantry are a handsome, intelligent race, and 
there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over 
us, that rendered home and every scene we visited 
cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest 
days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey 
on foot to the summit of Monte San Pelegrino — 
a mountain of some height, on the top of which 
there is a chapel, the object, during certain days 
in the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion 
delighted him while it lasted, though he exerted 
himself too much, and the effect was considerable 
lassitude and weakness on his return. During 
the expedition he conceived the idea and wrote, 
in the three days immediately succeeding to his 
return, the Witch of Atlas. This poem is pecu- 
liarly characteristic of his tastes — wildly fanciful, 
full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human 
interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas 
that his imagination suggested. 

The surpassing excellence of The Cenci had 
made me greatly desire that Shelley should 
increase his popularity, by adopting subjects that 
would more suit the popular taste, than a poem 
conceived in the abstract and dreamy spirit of the 
Witch of Atlas. It was not only that I wisned 
him to acquire popularity as redounding to his 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 1820. 



279 



lame ; but I believed that he would obtain a 
greater mastery over his own powers, and greater 
happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned 
his endeavours. The few stanzas that precede 
the poem were addressed to me on my represent- 
ing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that 
I was iu the right. Shelley did not expect sym- 
pathy and approbation from the public ; but the 
want of it took away a portion of the ardour that 
ought to have sustained him while writing. He 
was thrown on his own resources, and on the 
inspiration of his own soul, and wrote because his 
mind overflowed, without the hope of being appre- 
ciated. I had not the most distant wish that he 
should truckle in opinion, or submit his lofty aspi- 
rations for the human race to the low ambition 
and pride of the many, but I felt sure, that if his 
poems were more addressed to the common feel- 
ings of men, his proper rank among the writers 
of the day would be acknowledged ; and that 
popularity as a poet would enable his countrymen 
to do justice to his character and virtues ; which, 
in those days, it was the mode to attack with the 
most flagitious calumnies and insulting abuse. 
That he felt these things deeply cannot be doubted, 
though he armed himself with the consciousness 
of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. 
The truth burst from his heart sometimes in soli- 
tude, and he would write a few unfinished verses 
that showed that he felt the sting ; among such I 
find the following : — 

Alas ! this is not what I thought life was. 
I knew that there were crimes and evil men, 
Misery and hate ; nor did I hope to pass 
Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen. 
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass 

The hearts of others And when 

I went among my kind, with triple brass 
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, 
To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woful mass ! 

I believed that all this morbid feeling would 
vanish, if the chord of sympathy between him and 
his countrymen were touched. But my per- 
suasions were vain, the mind could not be bent 
from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk 
instinctively from portraying human passion, with 
its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment 
and disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his 
own heart, and he loved to shelter himself rather 
in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and 
hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imagina- 
tions as borrowed their hues from sunrise or sun- 
set, from the yellow moonshine or paly twilight, 
from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of 



the woods ; which celebrated the singing of the 
winds among the pines, the flow of a murmuring 
stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds 
which nature creates in her solitudes. These are 
the materials which form the Witch of Atlas ; it 
is a brilliant congregation of ideas, such as his 
senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during 
his rambles in the sunny land he so much 
loved. 

Our stay at the baths of San Giuliano was 
shortened by an accident. At the foot of our 
garden ran the canal that communicated between 
the Serchio and the Arno. The Serchio over- 
flowed its banks, and breaking its bounds, this 
canal also overflowed ; all this part of the country 
is below the level of its rivers, and the consequence 
was, that it was speedily flooded. The rising 
waters filled the square of the baths, in the lower 
part of which our house was situated. The canal 
overflowed in the garden behind ; the rising waters 
on either side at last burst open the doors, and 
meeting in the house, rose to the height of six 
feet. It was a picturesque sight at night, to see 
the peasants driving the cattle from the plains 
below, to the hills above the baths. A fire was 
kept up to guide them across the ford ; and the 
forms of the men and the animals showed in dai*k 
relief against the red glare of the flame, which 
was reflected again in the waters that filled the 
square. 

We then removed to Pisa, and took up our 
abode there for the winter. The extreme mild- 
ness of the climate suited Shelley, and his soli- 
tude was enlivened by an intercourse with several 
intimate friends. Chance cast us, strangely 
enough, on this quiet, half-unpeopled town ; but 
its very peace suited Shelley, — its river, the near 
mountains, and not distant sea, added to its 
attractions, and were the objects of many delight- 
ful excursions. We feared the south of Italy 
and a hotter climate, on account of our child ; 
our former bereavement inspiring us with terror. 
We seemed to take root here, and moved little 
afterwards ; often, indeed, entertaining projects 
for visiting other parts of Italy, but still delaying. 
But for our fears, on account of our child, I 
believe we should have wandered over the world, 
both being passionately fond of travelling. But 
human life, besides its great unalterable necessities, 
is ruled by a thousand liliputian ties, that shackle 
at the time, although it is difficult to account after- 
wards for their influence over our destiny. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXXI. 



EPIPSYCHIDION: 

VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE 

LADY EMILIA V . 

NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF . 



L' annua amante si slancia furio del creato, e si crea nel infinite un Mondo tutto per 
da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro." — Her own words. 



di verso assai 



My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few 
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, 
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain ; 
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring 
Thee to base company (as chance may do), 
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, 
I prithee comfort thy sweet self again, 
My last delight ! tell them that they are dull, 
And bid them own that thou art beautiful, 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The writer of the following lines died at Florence, 
as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest 
of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he 
had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where 
it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited 
perhaps to that happier and better world of which he 
is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. 
His life was singular ; less on account of the romantic 
vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge 
which it received from his own character and feelings. 
The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is 
sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers 
without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to 
which it relates ; and to a certain other class it must 



ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a 
common organ of perception for the ideas of which it 
treats. Not but that, gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, 
che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore 
rettorico : e domandato non sapesse denudare le 
sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero 
verace intendimento. 

The present poem appears to have been intended by 
the wiiter as the dedication to some longer one. The 
stanza on the above page is almost a literal transla- 
tion from Dante's famous canzone 

Voi ch' intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, &c. 

The presumptuous application of the concluding lines 
to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense 
of my unfortunate friend : be it a smile not of contempt, 
but pity. S. 



EPIPSYCHIDION. 



28] 



EPIPSYCHIDION. 



Sweet Spirit ! Sister of that orphan one, 
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on, 
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee 
These votive wreaths of withered memory. 

Poor captive bird ! who, from thy narrow cage, 
Pourest such music, that it might assuage 
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, 
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody ; 
This song shall be thy rose : its petals pale 
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale ! 
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, 
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom. 

High, spirit-winged Heart ! who dost for ever 
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, 
Till those bright plumes of thought, in which 

arrayed 
It over-soared this low and worldly shade, 
Lie shattered ; and thy panting wounded breast 
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest ! 
I weep vain tears : blood would less bitter be, 
Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. 

Seraph of Heaven ! too gentle to be human, 
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman 
All that is insupportable in thee 
Of light, and love, and immortality ! 
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse ! 
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe ! 
Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! Thou living 

Form 
Among the Dead ! Thou Star above the Storm ! 
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror ! 
Thou Harmony of Nature's art ! Thou Mirror 
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun, 
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on ! 
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now 
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow ; 
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song 
Ali of its much mortality and wrong, 
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew 
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens 

through, 
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstacy : 
Then smile on it, so that it may not die 

I never thought before my death to see 
Youth's vision thus made perfect : Emily, 
I love thee ; though the world by no thin name 
Will hide that love, from its unvalued shame. 
Would we two had been twins of the same mother ! 
Or, that the name my heart lent to another 
Could be a sister's bond for her and thee, 
Blending two beams of one eternity ! 
Yet were one lawful and the other true, 
These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due, 
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me ! 
I am not thine : 1 am a part of thee. 



Sweet Lamp ! my moth-like Muse has burnt its 
wings, 
Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, 
Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style, 
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile, 
A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless ? 
A well of sealed and secret happiness, 
Whose waters like blithe light and music are, 
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom ? A Star 
Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone ? 
A smile amid dark frowns ? a gentle tone 
Amid rude voices ? a beloved light ? 
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight ? 
A lute, which those whom love has taught to play 
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day 
And lull fond grief asleep ? a buried treasure ? 
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure ! 
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe ? — I measure 
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, 
And find — alas ! mine own infirmity. 

She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way, 
And lured me towards sweet Death ; as Night by 

Day, 
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope, 
Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, 
In the suspended impulse of its lightness, 
Were less ethereally light : the brightness 
Of her divinest presence trembles through 
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew 
Embodied in the windless heaven of June, 
Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon 
Burns inextinguishably beautiful : 
And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full 
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, 
Killing the sense with passion : sweet as stops 
Of planetary music heard in trance. 
In her mild fights the starry spirits dance, 
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap 
Under the lightnings of the soul — too deep 
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. 
The glory of her being, issuing thence, 
Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shado 
Of unentangled intermixture, made 
By Love, of light and motion ; one intense 
Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, 
Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing 
Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing 
With the unintermitted blood, which there 
Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air 
The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,) 
Continuously prolonged, and ending never, 
Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled 
Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world ; 
Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. 
Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress, 
And her loose hair ; and where some heavy tress 
j The air of her own speed has disentwined, 
. The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind ; 



282 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821 



And in tin* soul a wild odonr is felt, 
Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt 
Into the bosom of a frozen bud. 

See when- she stands ! a mortal shape indued 

With love ami life end light ami deity, 
Ami motion which may change but cannot die ; 
An image of some bright Eternity ; 
\ shadow of some golden dream ; a Splendour 
Leaving the third sphere pilotlesa ; a tender 

Reflection on the eternal .Moon of Love, 
Under whose motions life's dull billows move ; 
A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning ; 
A \ision like incarnate April, warning, 
With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy 
Into his summer grave. 

Ah ! woe is me ! 
What have I dared 1 where am I lifted ? how 
Shall I descend, and perish not ? I know 
That Love makes all things equal : I have heard 
By mine own heart this joyous truth averred : 
The spirit of the worm beneath the sod, 
In love and worship, blends itself with God. 

Spouse ! Sister ! Angel ! Pilot of the Fate 
Whose course has been so starless ! too late 
Beloved ! too soon adored, by me ! 
For in the fields of immortality 
My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, 
A divine presence in a place divine ; 
Or should have moved beside it on this earth, 
A shadow of that substance, from its birth ; 
But not as now : — I love thee ; yes, I feel 
That on the fountain of my heart a seal 
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright 
For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight. 
We — are we not formed, as notes of music are, 
For one another, though dissimilar ; 
Such difference without discord, as can make 
Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake, 
As trembling leaves in a continuous air ? 

Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare 
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wreckt. 
I never was attached to that great sect, 
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select 
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, 
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend 
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code 
Of modern morals, and the beaten road 
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, 
W T ho travel to their home among the dead 
By the broad highway of the world, and so 
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, 
The dreariest and the longest journey go. 

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, 
That to divide is not to take away. 
Love is like understanding, that grows bright, 
Gazing on many truths ; 'tis like thy light, 
Imagination ! which, from earth and sky, 
And from the depths of human phantasy, 
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills 
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills 
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow 
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow 
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, 
The fife that wears, the spirit that creates 
One object, and one form, and builds thereby 
A sepulchre for its eternity. 



Mind from its object differs most in this : 
Evil from good ; misery from happiness ; 
The baser from the nobler ; the impure 
And frail, from what is clear and must endure. 
[f you divide suffering and dross, you may 
Diminish till it is consumed away ; 
[f you divide pleasure and love and thought, 
Each part exceeds the wdiole ; and we know not 
How much, while any yet remains unshared, 
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared : 
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw 
The unenvied light of hope ; the eternal law 
By which those live, to whom this world of life 
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife 
Tills for the promise of a later birth 
The wilderness of this Elysian earth. 

There was a Being whom my spirit oft 
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, 
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, 
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, 
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves 
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves 
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor 
Paved her light steps ; — on an imagined shore, 
Under the grey beak of some promontory 
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, 
That I beheld her not. In solitudes 
Her voice came to me through the whispering woods, 
And from the fountains, and the odours deep 
Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep 
Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, 
Breathed but of her to the enamoured air ; 
And from the breezes whether low or loud, 
And from the rain of every passing cloud, 
And from the singing of the summer-birds, 
And from all sounds, all silence. In the words 
Of antique verse and high romance, — in form, 
Sound, colour — in whatever checks that Storm 
Which with the shattered present chokes the past J 
And in that best philosophy, whose taste 
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom 
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom ; 
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. — 

Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth 
I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, 
And towards the loadstar of my one desire, 
I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight 
Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light, 
When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere 
A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, 
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. — 
But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, 
Past, like a God throned on a winged planet, 
Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, 
Into the dreary cone of our life's shade ; 
And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, 
I would have followed, though the grave between 
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen : 
When a voice said : — " Thou of hearts the weakest, 
The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest." 
Then I — " Where?" the world's echo answered 

" where ! " 
And in that silence, and in my despair, 
I questioned erery tongueless wind that flew 
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew 
Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul ; 
And murmured names and spells which have 

controul 



EPIPSYCIIIDION. 



2«3 



Over the sightless tyrants of oxu' fate ; 

But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate 

The night which closed on her ; nor uncreate 

That world within this Chaos, mine and me, 

Of which she was the veiled Divinity, 

The world I say of thoughts that worshipped 

her : 
And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear, 
And every gentle passion sick to death, 
Feeding my course with expectation's breath, 
Into the wintry forest of our life ; 
And struggling through its error witn vain strife, 
And stumbling in my weakness and my haste, 
And half bewildered by new forms, I past 
Seeking among those untaught foresters 
If I could find one form resembling hers, 
In which she might have masked herself from 

me. 
There, — One, whose voice was venomed melody 
Sate by a well, under blue night-shade bowers ; 
The breath of her false mouth was like faint 

flowers, 
Her touch was as electric poison, — flame 
Out of her looks into my vitals came, 
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew 
A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew 
Into the core of my green heart, and lay 
Upon its leaves ; until, as hair grown grey 
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime 
With ruins of unseasonable time. 

In many mortal forms I rashly sought 
The shadow of that idol of my thought. 
And some were fair — but beauty dies away : 
Others were wise — but honeyed words betray : 
And One was true — oh ! why not true to me ? 
Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, 
I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, 
Wounded, and weak, and panting ; the cold day 
Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain, 
When, like a noon-day dawn, there shone again 
Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed 
As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed, 
As is the Moon, whose changes ever run 
Into themselves, to the eternal Sun ; 
The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright 

isles, 
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles. 
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame 
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, 
And warms not but illumines. Young and fair 
As the descended Spirit of that sphere, 
She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night 
From its own darkness, until all was bright 
Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind, 
And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, 
She led me to a cave in that wild place, 
And sat beside me, with her downward face 
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon 
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion. 
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, 
And all my being became bright or dim 
As the Moon's image in a summer sea, 
According as she smiled or frowned on me ; 
And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed : 
Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead»: — 
For at her silver voice came Death and Life, 
Unmindful each of their accustomed strife, 
Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, 
The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother, 



And through the cavern without wings they flew, 
And cried, " Away ! he is not of our crew." 
1 wept) and, though it be a dream, 1 weep. 

What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, 
Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips 
Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse ; — 
And how my soul was as a lampless sea, 
And who was then its Tempest ; and when She, 
The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost 
Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast 
The moving billows of my being fell 
Into a death of ice, immoveable ; — 
And then — what earthquakes made itgape and split, 
The white Moon smiling all the while on it, 
These words conceal : — If not, each word would be 
The key of stauuchless tears. Weep not for me ! 

At length, into the obscure forest came 
The vision I had sought through grief and shame. 
Ath wart that wintry wilderness of thorns 
Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's, 
And from her presence life was radiated 
Through the grey earth and branches bare and 

dead ; 
So that her way was paved, and roofed above 
With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love ; 
And music from her respiration spread 
Like light, — all other sounds were penetrated 
By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound, 
So that the savage winds hung mute around ; 
And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair 
Dissolving the dull cold in the froze air : 
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, 
When light is changed to love, this glorious One 
Floated into the cavern where I lay, 
And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay 
Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below 
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow 
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night 
Was penetrating me with living light : 
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me 
So many years — that it was Emily. 

Thin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, 
This world of love, this me ; and into birth 
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart 
Magnetic might into its central heart ; 
And lift its billows and its mists, and guide 
By everlasting laws each wind and tide 
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave ; 
And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave 
Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers 
The armies of the rainbow-winged showers ; 
And, as those married lights, which from the 

towers 
Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe 
In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe ; 
And all their many-mingled influence blend, 
If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end ; — 
So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway, 
Govern my sphere of being, night and day ! 
Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might ; 
Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light ; 
And, through the shadow of the seasons three, 
From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, 
Light it into the Winter of the tomb, 
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom. 
Thou too, O Comet, beautiful and fierce, 
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe 



284 



POEMS WHITTEX TN 18-21. 



Towards thine own : till, wreckt in that convulsion, 
Alternating attraction ami repulsion, 
Thine wont astray, and that was rent in twain ; 
Oh, float into oar snore heaven again ! 
Be there tore's folding-star at thy return ; 
The living Sun will feed thee from its orn 
Of golden fire : the Moon will veil her horn 
In thy last smiles ; adoring Even and Morn 
Will worship thee with inosnss of calm breath 

And lights and shadows ; as the star of Death 
And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild 
Called Hope and Fear — upon the heart are piled 
Their offerings, — of this sacrifice divine 
A World shall he the altar. 

Lady mine, 
Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth 
Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts 

forth, 
Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes, 
Will be as of the trees of Paradise. 

The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. 
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality 
Is mine, remain a vestal sister still ; 
To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, 

i Not mine, but me, henceforth be thou united 
Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. 
The hour is come : — the destined Star has risen 
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. 

i The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set 
The sentinels — but true love never yet 
Was thus constrained : it overleaps all fence : 
Like lightning, with invisible violence 
Piercing its continents : like Heaven's free breath, 
Which he who grasps can hold not ; liker Death, 
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way 
Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array 
Of arms : more strength has Love than he or they ; 
For he can burst his charnel, and make free- 
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, 

' The soul in dust and chaos. 

Emily, 
A ship is floating in the harbour now, 
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow ; 
There is a path on the sea's azure floor, 
No keel has ever ploughed that path before ; 
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles ; 
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles ; 
The merry mariners are bold and free : 
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me ? 
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest 
Is a far Eden of the purple East ; 
And we between her wings will sit, while Night, 
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, 
, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, 
I Treading each other's heels, unheededly. 

It is an isle under Ionian skies, 
I Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, 
| And, for the harbours are not safe and good, 
. This land would have remained a solitude 
; But for some pastoral people native there, 
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air 
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, 
Simple and spirited ; innocent and bold. 
The blue ^Egean girds this chosen home, 
With ever-changing sound and light and foam, 
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar ; 
And all the winds wandering along the shore 



Undulate with the andulating tide: 

There are thick w tods where sylvan forms abide ; 

And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, 

As clear as elemental diamond, 

Or serene morning air ; and tar beyond, 

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deei 

(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a 

year,) 
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls 
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls 
Illumining, with sound that never fails, 
Accompany the noonday nightingales ; 
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs 
The light clear element which the isle wears 
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, 
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, 
And falls upon the eye-lids like faint sleep ; 
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, 
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain 
Till you might faint with that delicious pain. 
And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, 
With that deep music is in unison : 
Which is a soul within the soul — they seem 
Like echoes of an antenatal dream. — 
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, 
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity ; 
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, 
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. 
It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, 
Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light 
Upon its mountain-peaks ; blind vultures, they 
Sail onward far upon their fatal way : 
The winged storms, chaunting their thunder-psalm 
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm 
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, 
From which its fields and w r oods ever renew 
Their green and golden immortality. 
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky 
There fall clear exhalations, soft and bright, 
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight. 
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside, 
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride 
Glowing at once with love and loveliness, 
Blushes and trembles, at its own excess : 
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less 
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, 
An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile 
Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen 
O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, 
Filling their bare and void interstices. — 
But the chief marvel of the wilderness 
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how 
None of the rustic island-people know ; 
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height 
It overtops the woods ; but, for delight, 
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime 
Had been invented, in the world's young prime, 
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, 
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house 
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse. 
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art, 
But, as it were, Titanic ; in the heart 
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown 
Out of the mountains, from the living stone, 
Lifting itself in caverns light and high : 
For all the antique and learned imagery 
Has been erased, and in the place of it 
The ivy and the wild vine interknit 
The volumes of their many-twining stems ; 
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems 



EPirSYCIIIDTON. 



285 



The larapless halls, and when they fade, the sky 

Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery 

With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, 

Or fragments of the day's intense serene ; 

Working mosaic on their Parian floors. 

And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers 

And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem 

To sleep in one another's arms, and dream 

Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all 

that we 
Read in their smiles, and call reality. 

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed 
Thee to be lady of the solitude. 
And I have fitted up some chambers there 
Looking towards the golden Eastern air, 
And level with the living winds, which flow 
Like waves above the living waves below. 
I have sent books and music there, and all 
Those instruments with which high spirits call 
The future from its cradle, and the past 
Out of its grave, and make the present last 
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, 
Folded within their own eternity. 
Our simple life wants little, and true taste 
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste 
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still, 
Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill. 
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet 
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit 
Round the evening tower, and the young stars 

glance 
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance ; 
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight 
Before our gate, and the slow silent night 
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. 
Be this our home in life, and when years heap 
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay, 
Let us become the overhanging day, 
The living soul of this Elysian isle, 
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile 
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, 
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, 
And wander in the meadows, or ascend 
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens 

bend 
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour ; 
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, 
Under the quick faint kisses of the sea 
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstacy, — 
Possessing and possest by all that is 
Within that calm circumference of bliss, 
And by each other, till to love and live 
Be one : — or, at the noontide hour, arrive 



Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep 

The moonlight of the expired night asleep, 

Through which the awakened day can never peep ; 

A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's, 

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent light-, ; 

Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain 

Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again. 

And we will talk, until thought's melody 

Become too sweet for utterance, and it die 

In words, to live again in looks, which dart 

With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, 

Harmonising silence without a sound. 

Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, 

And our veins beat together ; and our lips, 

With other eloquence than words, eclipse 

The soul that burns between them ; and the wells 

Which boil under our being's inmost cells, 

The fountains of our deepest life, shall be 

Confused in passion's golden purity, 

As mountain-springs under the morning Sun. 

We shall become the same, we shall be one 

Spirit within two frames, oh ! wherefore two ? 

One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew 

Till like two meteors of expanding flame, 

Those spheres instinct with it become the same, 

Touch, mingle, are transfigured ; ever still 

Burning, yet ever inconsumable : 

In one another's substance finding food, 

Like flames too pure and light and unimbued 

To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, 

Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away : 

One hope within two wills, one will beneath 

Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, 

One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, 

And one annihilation. Woe is me ! 

The winged words on which my soul would pierce 

Into the height of love's rare Universe, 

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire. — 

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! 



Weak verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, 
And say : — " We are the masters of thy slave ; 
" What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine % " 
Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, 
All singing loud : " Love's very pain is sweet, 
But its reward is in the world divine, 
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave." 
So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste 
Over the hearts of men, until ye meet 
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest, 
And bid them love each other, and be blest : 
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, 
And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's. 



286 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



ADONAIS; 



AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS, 



Al'THOIl OK KXDVMHIX, HYPERION, ETC. 



~Nvv 5e Qaviiiv, \d/jLir*is eairepos iu (pQifxivois. 



PREFACE. 

$apjj.a.Koj/%\8e, Biwv,iroTl gov crrS/jia, (papixaKOv elSey 
TIws rev roils x e ^eo"0"' iroTe8pa/j.e, kovk 4yKvKdvdrj • 
Ti'y Se Bporbs roaaovrov avdjxepos, $1 nepdaai roi, 
*H Sovp at \a\eouTi to <pa.pna.icov ; %K<puyev cpddv. 
Moschus, Epitaph. Bion. 



It is niy intention to subjoin to the London edition 
of this poem, a criticism upon theclaims of its lamented 
object to be classed among the writers of the highest 
genius who have adorned our age. My known repug- 
nance to the narrow principles of taste on which several 
of his earlier compositions were modelled, prove at 
least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the 
fragment of "Hyperion," as second to nothing that 
was ever produced by a writer of the same years. 

John Keats died at Rome, of a consumption, in his 
twenty-fourth year, on the 27th of December, 1820, 
and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of 
the protestants in that city, under the pyramid which 
is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, 
now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit 
of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among 
the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. 
It might make one in love with death, to think that 
one should be buried in so sweet a place. 

The genius of the lamented person to whose memory 
I have dedicated these unworthy verses, was not less 
delicate and fragile than it was beautiful ; and where 
canker-worms abound, what wonder, if its young 
flower was blighted in the bud ? The savage criticism 
on his " Endymion," which appeared in the Quarterly 
Review, produced the most violent effect on his sus- 
ceptible mind ; the agitation thus originated ended in 
the rupture of a blood-vessel in the luugs ; a rapid 
consumption ensued ; and the succeeding acknowledg- 
ments from more candid critics, of the true greatness 
of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound thus 
wantonly inflicted. 

It may be well said, that these wretched men know 
not what they do. They scatter their insults and their 
slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned 



shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or 
one, like Keats's, composed of more penetrable stuff 
One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most 
base and unprincipled calumniator. As to "Endymion," 
was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be 
treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated 
with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, 
"Paris," and " Woman," and a " Syrian Tale," and 
Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barret, and Mr. Howard Payne, 
and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these 
the men, who in their venal good-nature, presumed to 
draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and 
Lord Byron ? "What gnat did they strain at here, after 
having swallowed all those camels'? Against what 
woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these 
literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? 
Miserable man ! you, one of the meanest, have 
wantonly defaced one of the uoblest specimens of the 
workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, 
that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, 
but used none. 

The circumstances of the closing scene of poor 
Keats's life were not made known to me until the 
Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to under- 
stand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had 
received from the criticism of " Endymion" was ex- 
asperated at the bitter sense of unrequited benefits ; 
the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the 
stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted 
the promise of his genius, than those on whom he had 
lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied 
to Rome, and attended in his last illness by Mr. 
Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I 
have been informed, " almost risked his own life, and 
sacrificed every prospect, to unwearied attendance upon 
his dying friend." Had I known these circumstances 
before the completion of my poem, I should have been 
tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the 
more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in 
the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can 
dispense with a reward from " such stuff as dreams 
are made of." His conduct is a golden augury of the 

success of his future career may the unextinguished 

Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of 
his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name 1 



ADONAIS. 



287 



ADONAIS. 



I weep for Adonais — he is 
Oh, weep for Adonais ! though our tears 
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! 
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years 
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, 
And teach them thine own sorrow ; say : with me 
Died Adonais ; till the Future dares 
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be 
An echo and a light unto eternity ! 



Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, 

When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies 

In darkness % where was lorn Urania 

When Adonais died ? With veiled eyes, 

'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise 

She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, 

Rekindled all the fading melodies, 

With which, like flowers that mock the corse 

beneath, 
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death. 



Oh, weep for Adonais — he is dead ! 
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep ! 
Yet wherefore 1 Quench within their burning bed 
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep, 
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep ; 
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair 
Descend : — oh, dream not that the amorous Deep 
Will yet restore him to the vital air ; 
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our 
despair. 

IV. 

Most musical of mourners, weep again ! 
Lament anew, Urania ! — He died, 
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, 
Blind, old, and lone.y, when his country's pride 
The priest, the sla\ e, and the liberticide, 
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite 
Of lust and blood ; he went, unterrified, 
Into the gulf of death ; but his clear Sprite 
Yet reigns o'er earth ; the third among the sons of 
light. 



Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
Not all co that bright station dared to climb : 
And hfppier they their happiness who knew, 
Whos<; tapers yet burn through that night of time 
In which suns perished ; others more sublime, 
Stru 3k by the envious wrath of man or God, 
Hav 3 sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime ; 
And 'some yet live, treading the thorny road, 
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's 
serene abode. 



But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished, 
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, 
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, 
And fed with true love tears instead of dew ; 
Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, 
The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew 
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste ; 
The broken lily lies — the storm is overpast. 



To that high Capital, where kingly Death 
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, 
He came ; and bought, with price of purest 

breath, 
A grave among the eternal. — Come away ! 
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day 
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof ! while still 
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay ; 
Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill 
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. 



He will awake no more, oh, never more ! 
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 
The shadow of white Death, and at the door 
Invisible Corruption waits to trace 
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place ; 
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe 
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law 
Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain 
draw. 

IX. 

Oh, weep for Adonais ! — The quick Dreams, 
The passion-winged Ministers of thought, 
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught 
The love which was its music, wander not, — 
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, 
But droop there, whence they sprung ; and mourn 

their lot 
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, 

They ne'er will gather strength, nor find a home 
again. 

x. 
And one with trembling hand clasps his cold head, 
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries, 
" Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead ; 
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies 
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." 
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise ! 
She knew not 'twas her own ; as with no stain 

She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its 



2n? 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



One from a lucid urn of starry dew 

Washed his light limits, as it' wmhalming them ; 
Another dipt her profuse Locks, and throw, 
The wreath upon him, like an anadem, 
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem ; 
Another in her wilful grief would break 
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stom 

iter loss with one which was more weak ; 
And dull the barbed tire against his frozen cheek. 



Another Splendour on his mouth alit, 
That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath 
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, 
And pass into the panting heart beneath 
With lightning and with music: the damp death 
Quenched its caress upon its icy lips ; 
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath 
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips, 
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its 



And others came, — Desires and Adorations, 
Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies, 
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incar- 
nations 
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies ; 
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam 
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 
Came in slow pomp ; — the moving pomp might seem 
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 



All he had loved, and moulded into thought 
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, 
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, 
Wet with, the tears which should adorn the ground, 
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day ; 
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, 
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, 

And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their 
dismay. 

xv. 
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, 
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, 
And will no more reply to winds or fountains, 
Or amorous birds perched on the young green 

spray, 
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day ; 
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear 
Than those for whose disdain they pined away 
Into a shadow of all sounds : — a drear 

Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen 
hear. 

XVI. 

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw 
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, [down 
Or they dead leaves ; since her delight is flown, 
For whom should she have waked the sullen year ? 
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear, 
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both 
Thou Adonais ; wan they stand and sere 
Amid the faint companions of their youth, 
With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing 
ruth. 



Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale, 
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; 
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale 
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain 
Her mighty youth, with morning doth complain, 
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 
As Albion wails for thee : the curse of Cain 
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, 
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest ! 



Ah woe is me ! Winter is come and gone, 
But grief returns with the revolving year ; 
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone ; 
The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear ; 
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' 
The amorous birds now pair in every brake, [bier ; 
And build their mossy homes in field and brere ; 
And the green lizard, and the golden snake, 
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. 



Through wood and stream and field and hill and 

Ocean, 
A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst, 
As it has ever done, with change and motion, 
From the great morning of the world when first 
God dawned on Chaos ; in its stream immersed, 
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light ; 
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst ; 
Diffuse themselves ; and spend in love's delight, 
The beauty and the joy of their x'enewed might. 



The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender, 
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath ; 
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour 
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death, 
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath ; 
Nought we know die3. Shall that alone which knows 
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath 
By sightless lightning ? th' intense atom glows 
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. 



Alas ! that all we loved of him should be, 
But for our grief, as if it had not been, 
And grief itself be mortal ! Woe is me ! 
Whence are we, and why are we ? of what scene 
The actors or spectators ? G'eat and mean 
Meet massed in death, who Lmds what life must 

borrow. 
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, 
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, 
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year 

to sorrow. 

XXII. 

He will awake no more, oh, never more ! 
" Wake thou," cried Misery, "childless Mc ther, rise 
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart 5 core, 
A wound more fierce than his tears and L'ighs. " 
And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, 
And all the echoes whom their sister's song 
Had held in holy silence, cried, " Arise !" 
Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory L-tung, 
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour 
sprung. 



ADONAIS. 






She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs 
Out of the East, and follows wild and drear 
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, 
Even as a ghost ahandoning a bier, 
Has left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear 
So struck, so roused, so rapt, Urania, 
So saddened round her like an atmosphere 
Of stormy mist ; so swept her on her way, 
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. 



Out of her secret Paradise she sped, [steel, 

Through camps and cities rough with stone, and 
And human hearts, which to her aery tread 
Yielding not, wounded the invisible 
Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell ; 
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than 
Rent the soft Form they never could repel, [they 
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, 
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. 



In the death-chamber for a moment Death, 
Shamed by the presence of that living Might, 
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath 
Revisited those lips, and life's pale light [delight. 
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear 
" Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, 
As silent lightning leaves the starless night ! 
Leave me not !" cried Urania : her distress 
Roused Death : Death rose and smiled, and met her 
vain caress. 



" Stay yet awhile ! speak to me once again ; 
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live ; 
And in my heartless breast and burning brain 
That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else survive, 
With food of saddest memory kept alive, 
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part 
Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give 
All that I am to be as thou now art, 

But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart ! 



" gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men 
Toosoon,and with weak hands though mighty heart 
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den ? 
Defenceless as thou wert, oh ! where was then 
Wisdom the mirror'd shield, or scorn the spear \ 
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when 
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, 
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like 
deer. 

XXVIII. 

" The herded wolves, bold only to pursue ; 
The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead ; 
The vultures, to the conqueror's banner true, 
Who feed where Desolation first has fed, 
And whose wings rain contagion ; — how they fled, 
When, like Apollo, from his golden bow, 
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 
And smiled ! — The spoilers tempt no second blow, 
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying 
low. 



| " The sun comes forth, and man 
lie sets, and each ephemeral ini 
Is gathered into death without a dawn, 

i And the immortal stars awake again ; 

j So it is in the world of living men : 

' A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight 

Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when 

It sinksjthe swarms that dimmed or shared its \'v+\\i 

Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night." 



Thus ceased she :and the mountain shepherds came, 
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent ; 
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
Over his living head like Heaven is bent, 
An early but enduring monument, 
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song 
In sorrow ; from her wilds Ierne sent 
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, 
And love taught grief to fall like music from his 
tongue. 



'Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, 
A phantom among men, companionless 
As the last cloud of an expiring storm, 
Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, 
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, 
Actseon-like, and now he fled astray 
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, 
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their 
prey. 

XXXII. 

A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift — 
A love in desolation masked ; — a Power 
Girt round with weakness ; — it can scarce uplift 
The weight of the superincumbent hour ; 
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
A breaking billow ; — even whilst we speak 
Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 
The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek 
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart 
may break. 

XXXIII. 

His head was bound with pansies over-blown, 
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; 
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, 
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew 
Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew, 
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of that crew 
He came the last, neglected and apart ; 
A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart. 



All stood aloof, and at his partial moan 
Smiled through their tears : well knew that gentle 
Who in another's fate now wept his own ; [band 
As in the accents of an unknown land 
He sang new sorrow ; sad Urania scanned 
The Stranger's mien, and murmured : "Who art 
He answered not, but with a sudden hand [thou ?" 
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, 
Which was like Cain's or Christ's. Oh ! that \t 
should be so ! 






POEMS WKiTTEN IN 1821 



What solter voice is hushed over the (load! 

Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown I 
What form loans sadly o'er the white death-bed, 

In mockery of monumental stone, 

The heavy heart heaving without a moan \ 

If it be he, who, gentlest of the wise, 

Taught, soot hod, loved, honoured the departed one ; 

me not vex, with inharmonious sighs, 
The silence o\' that heart's accepted sacrifice. 



lie lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he ; 
Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young Dawn, 
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan ! 
Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air 
Which like a morning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair I 



XXXYI. 

Our Adonais has drunk poison — oh! 
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown 
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe ? 
The nameiess worm would now itself disown : 
1 1 felt, yet could escape the magic tone 
Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong, 
But what was howling in one breast alone, 
Silent with expectation of the song, 
Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre un- 
strung. 

XXXVII. 

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame ! 
Live ! fear no heavier chastisement from me, 
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name ! 
But be thyself, and know thyself to be ! 
And ever at thy season be thou free 
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow : 
Remorse and Self- contempt shall cling to thee ; 
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, 
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt — as now. 



Nor let us weep that our delight is fled 
Far from these carrion-kites that scream below : 
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead ; 
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. 
Dust to the dust ! but the pure spirit shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 
Through time and change, unquenchably the same, 
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of 
shame. 



Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — 
He hath awakened from the dream of life — 
'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 
Invulnerable nothings — We decay 
Like corpses in a charnel ; fear and grief 
Convulse us and consume us day by day, 
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living 
clay. 



He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
His voice in all her music, from the moan 
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
He is a presence to be felt and known 
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
Which wields the world with never wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 



He is a portion of the loveliness 
Which once he made more lovely : he doth beaj 
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress 
Sweeps through the dull dense werld, compelling 
All new successions to the forms they wear [there 
Torturing th'unwilling dross that checks its flight 
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 
And bursting in its beauty and its might 
From trees and beasts and men into the Heavens 
light. 

XLIV. 

The splendours of the firmament of time 
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not : 
Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 
And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 
And love and life contend in it, for what 
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, 
And move like winds of fight on dark and stormy air. 



The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal 
Far in the unapparent. Chatterton [thought, 
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 
Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought 
And as he fell and as he lived and loved, 
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 
Arose ; and Lucan, by his death approved ; 
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 



He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, 
And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
Can touch him not and torture not again ; 
From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
He is secure, and now can never mourn 
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain ; 
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, 
With sparkless ashes: load an unlamented urn. 



And many more, whose names on Earth are dark. 
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die 
So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
« Thou art become as one of us," they cry ; 
" It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
Swung blind in unascended majesty, 
Silent alone amid a Heaven of song. 
Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our 
! throng!" 



ADONAIS. 



•2!* I 



Who mourns for Adonais ? oh come forth, 
Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright. 
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth ; 
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light 
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
Satiate the void circumference : then shrink 
Even to a point within our day and night ; 
And keep thy heart light, lest it make thee sink 
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the 
brink. 

XLVIII. 

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, 
Oh, not of him, but of our joy : 'tis nought 
That ages, empires, and religions, there 
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought ; 
For such as he can lend, — they borrow not 
Gloiy from those who made the world their prey ; 
And he is gathered to the kings of thought 
Who waged contention with their times' decay, 
And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 



Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise, 
The grave, the city, and the wilderness : 
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress 
The bones of Desolation's nakedness 
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, 
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead 
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread, 



And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time 
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand ; 
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, 
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath 
A field is spread, on which a newer band 
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, 
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished 
breath. 



Here pause : these graves are all too young as yet 
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned 
Its charge to each ; and if the seal is set, 
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, 



Break it not thou ! too surely shalt thou find 
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, 
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind 
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
What Adonais is, why fear we to become ? 



The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
Heaven'slight for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly; 
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, 
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost 

seek ! 
Follow where all is fled! — Rome's azure sky, 
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak 
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 



Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my 

'Heart? 
Thy hopes are gone before : from all things here 
They have departed ; thou shouldst now depart ! 
A light is past from the revolving year, 
And man, and woman ; and what still is dear 
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. 
The soft sky smiles, — the low wind whispers near : 
'Tis Adonais calls ! oh, hasten thither, 
No more let Life divide what Death can j oin together. 



That light whose smile kindles the Universe, 
That Beauty in which all things work and move, 
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse 
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
Which through the web of being blindly wove 
By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, 
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 



The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 
Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar ; 
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 



292 



POEMS \V KITTEN IN 1821. 



MISCELLANEOUS 



TO E*** V***. 



TO NIGHT. 



Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me 

Sweet-basil and mignionette ? 
Embleming love and health, which never yet 
In the same wreath might be. 

Alas, and they are wet ! 
Is it with thy kisses or thy tears ? 

For never rain or dew 

Such fragrance drew 
From plant or flower — the very doubt endears 

My sadness ever new, 
The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee. 

March, 1821. 



TIME. 

Unfathomable Sea ! whose waves are years, 
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe 

Are brackish with the salt of human tears ! 

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow 

Claspest the limits of mortality ! 

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, 

Vomitest thy Avrecks on its inhospitable shore ; 

Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, 
Who shall put forth on thee, 
Unfathomable Sea ? 



FROM THE ARABIC. 

AN IMITATION. 



My faint spirit was sitting in the light 

Of thy looks, my love ; 
It panted for thee like the hind at noon 

For the brooks, my love. 
Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight, 

Bore thee far from me ; 
My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, 

Did companion thee. 

Ah ! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, 

Or the death they bear, 
The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove 

With the wings of care ; 
In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, 

Shall mine cling to thee, 
Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, 

It may bring to thee. 



Swiftly walk over the western wave, 

Spirit of Night ! 
Out of the misty eastern cave, 
Where all the long and lone daylight, 
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, 
Which make thee terrible and dear, — 

Swift be thy flight ! 

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, 

Star-inwrought ! 
Blind with thine hah* the eyes of day, 
Kiss her until she be wearied out, 
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, 
Touching all with thine opiate wand — 

Come, long-sought ! 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 

I sighed for thee ; 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, 
And the weary Day turned to his rest, 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 

I sighed for thee. 

Thy brother Death came, and cried, 

Wouldst thou me ? 
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 

Murmured like a noon-tide bee, 
Shall I nestle near thy side ? 
Wouldst thou me ? — And I replied, 
No, not thee ! 

Death will come when thou art dead, 

Soon, too soon — 
Sleep will come when thou art fled ; 
Of neither would I ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night — 
Swift be thine approaching flight, 

Come soon, soon ! 



TO 



Music, when soft voices die, 
Vibrates in the memory — 
Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken. 

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 
Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; 
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
Love itself shall slumber on. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



293 



MUTABILITY. 



The flower that smiles to-day 

To-morrow dies ; 
All that we wish to stay, 

Tempts and then flies ; 
What is this world's delight ? 
Lightning that mocks the night, 
Brief even as bright. 

Virtue, how frail it is ! 

Friendship too rare ! 
Love, how it sells poor bliss 

For proud despair ! 
But we, though soon they fall, 
Survive their joy and all 
Which ours we call. 

Whilst skies are blue and bright, 
Whilst flowers are gay, 

Whilst eyes that change ere night 
Make glad the day ; 

Whilst yet the calm hours creep, 

Dream thou — and from thy sleep 

Then wake to weep. 



THE FUGITIVES. 



The waters are flashing, 
The white hail is dashing, 
The lightnings are glancing, 
The hoar-spray is dancing — 
Away ! 

The whirlwind is rolling, 
The thunder is tolling, 
The forest is swinging, 
The minster bells ringing — 
Come away ! 

The Earth is like Ocean, 
Wreck-strewn and in motion 
Bird, beast, man, and worm, 
Have crept out of the storm- 
Come away ! 



" Our boat has one sail, 
And the helmsman is pale ; — 
A bold pilot I trow, 
Who should follow us now," — 
Shouted He — 

And she cried : " Ply the oar ; 
Put off gaily from shore ! " — 
As she spoke, bolts of death 
Mixed with hail, specked their path 
O'er the sea. 



And from isle, tower, and rock, 
The blue beacon-cloud broke, 
Though dumb in the blast, 
The red cannon flashed fast 
From the lee. 



" And fear'st thou, and fear'st thou ? 
And see'st thou, and hear'st thou ? 
And drive we not free 
O'er the terrible sea, 
I and thou?" 

One boat-cloak did cover 
The loved and the lover — 
Their blood beats one measure. 
They murmur proud pleasure 
Soft and low ; — 

While around the lashed Ocean, 
Like mountains in motion, 
Is withdrawn and uplifted, 
Sunk, shattered, and shifted, 
To and fro. 



In the court of the fortress 
Beside the pale portress, 
Like a blood-hound well beaten 
The bridegroom stands, eaten 
By shame ; 

On the topmost watch-turret, 
As a death-boding spirit, 
Stands the grey tyrant father, 
To his voice the mad weather 
Seems tame ; 

And with curses as wild 
As e'er cling to child, 
He devotes to the blast 
The best, loveliest, and last 
Of his name ! 



LINES. 

Far, far away, ye 
Halcyons of Memory ! 
Seek some far calmer nest 
Than this abandoned breast ; — 
No news of your false spring 
To my heart's winter bring ; 
Once having gone, in vain 
Ye come again. 

Vultures, who build your bovvers 
High in the Future's towers ! 
Withered hopes on hopes are spread 
Dying joys choked by the dead, 
Will serve your beaks for prey 
Many a day. 



i!!>4 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



TO 



Mini eyes were dim with tears unshod ; 

Yee, I was firm — thus wert not thou ;— 
My baffled tooka did fear yet dread 

To moot thy looks — I could not know 
ll«>\v anxiously they sought to shine 
With soothing pity upon mine. 

To sit and curb the soul's mute rage 
Which preys upon itself alone ; 

To curse the lite which is the cage 
Of lettered grief that dares not groan, 

Hiding from many a careless eye 

The scorned load of agony. 

Whilst thou alone, then not regarded, 
The [ ] thou alone should be, 

To spend years thus, and be rewarded, 
As thou, sweet love, requited me 

When none were near — Oh ! I did wake 

From torture for that moment's sake. 

Upon my heart thy accents sweet 
Of peace and pity fell like dew 

On flowers half dead ; — thy lips did meet 
Mine tremblingly ; thy dark eyes threw 

Their soft persuasion on my brain, 

Charming away its dream of pain. 

We are not happy, sweet ! our state 
Is strange and full of doubt and fear ; 

More need of words that ills abate ;— 
Reserve or censure come not near 

Our sacred friendship, lest there be 

No solace left for thou and me. 



Gentle and good and mild thou art, 
Nor can I live if thou appear 

Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart 
Away from me, or stoop to wear 

The mask of scorn, although it be 

To hide the love thou feel'st for me. 



SONG. 



Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 

Spirit of Delight ! 
Wherefore hast thou left me now 

Many a day and night ? 
Many a weary night and day 
Tis since thou art fled away. 

How shall ever one like me 

Win thee back again? 
With the joyous and the free 

Thou wilt scoff at pain. 
Spirit false ! thou hast forgot 
All but those who need thee not. 



As a lizard with the shade 

Of a trembling leaf, 
Thou with sorrow art dismayed ; 

Even the sighs of grief 
Reproach thee, that thou art not near, 
And reproach thou wilt not hear. 

Let me set my mournful ditty 

To a merry measure ; — 
Thou wilt never come for pity, 

Thou wilt come for pleasure ; — 
Pity then will cut away 
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. 

I love all that thou lovest, 

Spirit of Delight ! 
The fresh Earth in new leaves drest, 

And the starry night ; 
Autumn evening, and the morn 
When the golden mists are born. 

I love snow, and all the forms 

Of the radiant frost ; 
I love waves, and winds, and storms, 

Every thing almost 
Which is Nature's, and may be 
Untainted by man's misery. 

I love tranquil solitude, 

And such society 
As is quiet, wise, and good ; 

Between thee and me 
What difference ? but thou dost possess 
The things I seek, not love them less. 

I love Love — though he has wings, 

And like light can flee, 
But, above all other things, 

Spirit, I love thee — 
Thou art love and life ! come, 
Make once more my heart thy home. 



TO 



When passion's trance is overpast, 
If tenderness and truth could last 
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep 
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep, 
I should not weep, I should not weep ! 

It were enough to feel, to see 

Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly, 

And dream the rest — and burn and be 

The secret food of fires unseen, 

Couldst thou but be as thou hast been. 

After the slumber of the year 
The woodland violets re-appear ; 
All things revive in field or grove, 
And sky and sea ;but two, which move, 
And for all others, life and love. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



LINES 

WRITTEN ON HEARING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF 
NAPOLEON. 

What ! alive and so bold, Earth I 

Art thou not over-bold ? 
What ! leapest thou forth as of old 

In the light of thy morning mirth, 
The last of the flock of the starry fold \ 
I la ! leapest thou forth as of old ? 
Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled, 
And canst thou more, Napoleon being dead l . 

How ! is not thy quick heart cold ! 

What spark is alive on thy hearth 1 
How ! is not his death-knell knolled ? 

And livest thou still, Mother Earth ? 
Thou wert warming thy fingers old 
O'er the embers covered and cold 
Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled — 
What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead ( 

" Who has known me of old," replied Earth, 

" Or who has my story told ? 
It is thou who art over bold." 

And the lightning of scorn laughed forth 
As she sung, " To my bosom I fold 
All my sons when their knell is knolled, 
And so with living motion all are fed, 
And the cmick spring like weeds out of the dead. 

" Still alive and still bold," shouted Earth, 
" I grow bolder, and still more bold. 

The dead fill me ten thousandfold 

Fuller of speed, and splendour, and mirth ; 

I was cloudy, and sullen and cold, 

Like a frozen chaos uprolled, 

Till by the spirit of the mighty dead 

My heart grew warm. I feed on whom I fed. 

" Ay, alive and still bold," muttered Earth, 

" Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled, 
In terror, and blood, and gold, 

A torrent cf ruin to death from his birth. 
Leave the millions who follow Jto mould 
The metal before it be cold, 
And weave into his shame, which like the dead 
Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled." 



A FRAGMENT. 

As a violet's gentle eye 

Gazes on the azure sky, 
Until its hue grows like what it beholds 

As a grey and empty mist 

Lies like solid Amethyst, 
Over the western mountain it enfolds, 

When the sunset sleeps 
Upon its snow. 

As a strain of sweetest sound 
Wraps itself the wind around, 

Until the voiceless wind be music too ; 
As aught dark, vain and dull, 
Basking in what is beautiful, 

Is full of light and love. 



GINEVRA. * 



Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one 
Who staggers forth into the air and sun 
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever, 
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever 
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain 
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train 
Of objects and of persons passed like things 
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings, 
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went ; 
The vows to which her lips had sworn assent 
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din, 
Deafening the lost intelligence within. 

And so she moved under the bridal veil, 
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale, 
And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth, 
And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,- - 
And of the gold and jewels glittering there 
She scarce felt conscious, — but the weary glare 
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light, 
Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight. 
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud 
Was less heavenly fair — her face was bowed, 
And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair 
Were mirrored in the polished marble stair 
Which led from the cathedral to the street ; 
And even as she went her light fair feet 
Erased these images. 

The bride-maidens who round her thronging came . 
Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame, 
Envying the unenviable ; and others 
Making the joy which should have been another's 
Their own by gentle sympathy ; and some 
Sighing to think of an unhappy home ; 
Some few admiring what can ever lure 
Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure 
Of parents' smiles for life's great cheat ; a thing 
Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining. 

But they are all dispersed — and lo ! she stands 
Looking in idle grief on her white hands, 
Alone within the garden now her own ; 
And through the sunny air, with jangling tone, 
The music of the merry marriage-bells, 
Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells ; — 
Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams 
That he is dreaming, until slumber seems 
A mockery of itself — when suddenly 
Antonio stood before her, pale as she. 
With agony, with sorrow, and with pride, 
He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride, 
And said — " Is this thy faith ? " and then as one 
Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun 
With fight like a harsh voice, which bids him rise 
And look upon his day of life with eyes 
Which weep in vain that they can dream no more, 
Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore 
To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood 
Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued 
Said — " Friend, if earthly violence or ill, 
Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will 

* This fragment is part of a poem which Shelley intended 
to write, founded on a story to he found in the first volume 
| of a hook entitled " L' Osservatore Fiorentino." 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 18-21. 



. op custom, time, or change, 
Ov circumstance, or terror, or revenge, 
Or wildered Looks, or words, or evil speech, 
With all their stings and venom, can impeach 
Our love, — we love not: — if the grave, which hides 
The victim from the tyrant, and divides 
The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart 
Imperious inquisition to the heart 
That is another's, could dissever ours, 
We love not." — a What ! do not the silent hours 
Beckon thee to G^herardi's bridal bed ? 

Is not that ring" a pledge, he would have said, 

Of broken vows, but she with patient look 
The golden circle from her linger took, 
And said — " Accept this token of my faith, 
The pledge of vows to be absolved by death ; 
And I am dead or shall be soon — my knell 
Will mix its music with that merry bell ; 
Does it not sound as if they sweetly said, 
' We toll a corpse out of the marriage bed ?' 
The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn 
Will serve unfaded for my bier— so soon 
That even the dying violet will not die 
Before Ginevra." The strong fantasy 
Had made her accents weaker and more weak, 
And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek, 
And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere 
Round her, which chilled the burning noon with 

fear, 
Making her but an image of the thought, 
Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought 
News of the terrors of the coming time. 
Like an accuser branded with the crime 
He would have cast on a beloved friend, 
Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end 
The pale betrayer — he then with vain repentance 
Would share, he cannot now av r ert, the sentence — 
Antonio stood and would have spoken, when 
The compound voice of women and of men 
Was heard approaching ; he retired, while she 
Was led amid the admiring company 
Back to the palace, — and her maidens soon 
Changed her attire for the afternoon, 
And left her at her own request to keep 
An hour of quiet and rest : — like one asleep 
With open eyes and folded hands she lay, 
Pale in the light of the declining day. 

Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set, 
And in the lighted hall the guests are met ; 
The beautiful looked lovelier in the light 
Of love, and admiration, and delight, 
Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes 
Kindling a momentary Paradise. 
This crowd is safer than the silent wood, 
.Where love's own doubts disturb the solitude ; 
T)n frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine 
Falls, and the dew of music more divine 
Tempers the deep emotions of the time 
To spirits cradled in a sunny clime : — 
How many meet, who never yet have met, 
To part too soon, but never to forget ? 
How many saw the beauty, power, and wit 
Of looks and words which ne'er enchanted yet ! 
But life's familiar veil was now withdrawn, 
As the world leaps before an earthquake's dawn, 
And .unprophetic of the coming hours, 
The matin winds from the expanded flowers 
Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken 
The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken 



From every living heart which it possesses, 
Through seas and winds, cities? and wildernesses, 
As if the future and the past were all 
Treasured i'the instant ;— so Gherardi's hall 
Laughed in the mirth of its lord's festival, 
Till some one asked — " Where is the Bride ? " And 
A bride's-maid went, and ere she came again [then 
A silence fell upon the guests — a pause 
Of expectation, as when beauty awes 
All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld ; 
Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled; — 
For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew 
The colour from the hearer's cheeks, aud flew 
Louder and swifter round the company ; 
And then Gherardi entered with an eye 
Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd 
Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud. 

They found Ginevra dead ! if it be death, 
To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath, 
With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white, 
And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light 
Mocked at the speculation they had owned. 
If it be death, when there is felt around 
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare, 
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair 
From the scalp to the anldes, as it were 
Corruption from the spirit passing forth, 
And giving all it shrouded to the earth, 
And leaving as swift lightning in its flight 
Ashes, and smoke, and darkness : in our night 
Of thought we know thus much of death, — no more 
Than the unborn dream of our life before 
Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore. 
The marriage feast and its solemnity 
Was turned to funeral pomp — the company, 
With heavy hearts and looks, broke up ; nor they 
Who loved the dead went weeping on their way 
Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise 
Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes, 
On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain, 
Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again. 
The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste, 
Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast, 
Showed as it were within the vaulted room 
A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom 
Had passed out of men's minds into the air. 
Some few yet stood around Gherardi there, 
Friends and relations of the dead, — and he, 
A loveless man, accepted torpidly 
The consolation that he wanted not, 
Awe in the place of grief within him wrought. 
Thefr whispers made the solemn silence seem 
More still — some wept, [ ] 

Some melted into tears without a sob, 
And some with hearts that might be heard to throb 
Leant on the .table, and at intervals 
Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls 
And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came 
Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame 
Of every torch and taper as it swept 
From out the chamber where the women kept ; — 
Their tears fell on the dear companion cold 
Of pleasures now departed ; then was knolled 
The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived, 
And finding death their penitent had shrived, 
Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon 
A vulture has just feasted to the bone. 
And then the mourning women came. — 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



297 



THE DIRGE. 



Old winter was gone 
In his weakness back to the mountains hoar, 

And the spring came down 
From the planet that hovers upon the shore 
Where the sea of sunlight encroaches 
On the limits of wintry night ; — 
1 f the land, and the air, and the sea, 
Rejoice not when spring approaches, 
We did not rejoice hi thee, 

Ginevra ! 

She is still, she is cold 

On the bridal couch, 
One step to the white death-bed, 

And one to the bier, 
And one .to the charnel — and one, Oh where? 

The dark arrow fled 

In the noon. 

Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled, 
The rats in her heart 
Will have made their nest, 
And the worms be alive in her golden hair ; 
While the spirit that guides the sun 
Sits throned in his flaming chair, 
She shall sleep. 



EVENING. 

PONTE A MARE, PISA. 



The sun is set ; the swallows are asleep ; 

The bats are flitting fast in the grey air ; 
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep ; 

And evening's breath, wandering here and there 
Over the quivering surface of the stream, 
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream. 

There are no dews on the dry grass to-night, 
Nor damp within the shadow of the trees ; 

The wind is intermitting, dry, and light ; 
And in the inconstant motion of the breeze 

The dust and straws are driven up and down, 

And whirled about the pavement of the town. 

Within the surface of the fleeting river 
The wrinkled image of the city lay, 

Immoveably unquiet, and for ever 
It trembles, but it never fades away ; 

Go to the [ ] 

You, being changed, will find it then as now. 

The chasm in which the sun has sunk, is shut 
By darkest barriers of enormous cloud, 

Like mountain over mountain huddled — but 
Growing and moving upwards in a crowd. 

And over it a space of watery blue, 

Which the keen evening star is shining through. 



TO-MORROW. 

Where art thou, beloved To-morrow ? 

When young and old, and strong and weak. 
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow, 

Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, — 
In thy place — ah ! well-a-day ! 
We find the thing we fled — To-day. 



A BRIDAL SONG. 



The golden gates of sleep unbar 

Where strength and beauty, met together, 
Kindle their image like a star 

In a sea of glassy weather ! 
Night, with all thy stars look down, — 

Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, — 
Never smiled the inconstant moon 

On a pair so true. 
Let eyes not see their own delight ; — 
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight 
Oft renew. 

Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her ! 

Holy stars, permit no wrong ! 
And return to wake the sleeper, 

Dawn, — ere it be long. 
joy ! fear ! what will be done 

In the absence of the sun ! 
Come along ! 



A LAMENT. 

Swtfter far than summer's flight, 
Swifter far than youth's delight, 
Swifter far than happy night, 

Art thou come and gone : 
As the earth when leaves are- dead, 
As the night when sleep is sped, 
As the heart when joy is fled, 

I am left lone, alone. 

The swallow Summer comes again, 
The owlet Night resumes her reign, 
But the wild swan Youth is fain 

To fly with thee, false as thou. 
My heart each day desires the morrow, 
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow, 
Vainly would my winter borrow 

Sunny leaves from any bough. 

Lilies for a bridal bed, 
Roses for a matron's head, 
Violets for a maiden dead, 

Pansies let my flowers be : 
On the living grave I bear, 
Scatter them without a tear, 
Let no friend, however dear, 

Waste one hope, one fear for ir.e. 






POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



THE BOAT, 

OH Tiir. SERCHI0. 



Oub boat is asleep on Serchio's stream, 

Its sails arc folded like thoughts in a dream, 
The helm sways idly, hither and thither ; 

Dominic, the boat -man, has brought the mast, 
And the oars and the sails ; but 'tis Bleeping fast, 
Like a beast, unconscious of its tether. 

The stars burnt out in the pale blue air, 

Ami the thin white moon lay withering there, 

To tower, and cavern, and rift, and tree, 

The owl and the bat fled drowsily. 

Day had kindled the deny woods 

And the rocks above and the stream below, 

And the vapours in their multitudes, 

And the Apennines' shroud of summer snow, 

And clothed with light of aery gold 

The mists in their eastern caves uprolled. 

Day had awakened all things that be, 
The lark and the thrush and the swallow free ; 
And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe, 
And the matin-bell and the mountain bee : 
Fire-flies were quenched on the dewy corn, 
Glow-worms went out on the river's brim, 
Like lamps which a student forgets to trim : 
The beetle forgot to wind his horn, 
The crickets were still in the meadow and hill : 
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun, 
Night's dreams and terrors, every one, 
Fled from the brains which are their prey, 
From the lamp's death to the morning ray. 

All rose to do the task He set to each, 
Who shaped us to his ends and not our own ; 
The million rose to learn, and one to teach 
What none yet ever knew or can be known. 

And many rose 
Whose woe was such that fear became desire ; — 
Melchior and Lionel were not among those ; 
They from the throng of men had stepped aside, 
And made their home under the green hill side. 
It was that hill, whose intervening brow 
Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye, 
Which the circumfluous plain waving below, 
Like a wide lake of green fertility, 
With streams and fields and marshes bare, 
Divides from the far Apennines — which lie 
Islanded in the immeasurable air. 

" What think you, as she lies in her green cove, 

Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of ? 

If morning dreams are true, why I should guess 

That she was dreaming of our idleness, 

And of the miles of watery way 

We should have led her by this time of day " — 

" Never mind," said Lionel, 

u Give care to the winds, they can bear it well 
About yon poplar tops ; and see ! 
The white clouds are driving merrily, 
And the stars we miss this morn will light 
More willingly our return to-night — 



List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair ; 
How it scatters Dominic's long black hair I 
Singing of us, and our lazy motions, 
1 f J can guess a boat's emotions." — 

The chain is loosed, the sails are spread, 

The living breath is fresh behind, 

As, with dews and sunrise fed, 

Comes the laughing morning wind ; — 

The sails are full, the boat makes head 

Against the Serchio's torrent fierce, 

Then flags with intermitting course, 

And hangs upon the wave, 

Which fervid from its mountain source 

Shallow, smooth, and strong, doth come, — 

Swift as fire, tempestuously 

It sweeps into the affrighted sea ; 

In morning's smile its eddies coil, 

Its billows sparkle, toss, and boil, 

Torturing all its quiet light 

Into columns fierce and bright. 

The Serchio, twisting forth 
Between the marble barriers which it clove 
At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm 
The wave that died the death which lovers love, 
Living in what it sought ; as if this spasm 
Had not yet past, the toppling mountains cling, 
But the clear stream in full enthusiasm 
Pours itself on the plain, until wandering, 
Down one clear path of effluence crystalline 
Sends its clear waves, that they may fling 
At Arno's feet tribute of corn and wine : 
Then, through the pestilential deserts wild 
Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted fir, 
It rushes to the Ocean. 

July, 1821. 



THE AZIOLA. 



" Do you not hear the Aziola cry % 
Methinks she must be nigh," 

Said Mary, as we sate 
In dusk, ere the stars were lit, or candles brought; 

And I, who thought 
This Aziola was some tedious woman, 

Asked, « Who is Aziola?" How elate 
I felt to know that it was nothing human, 

No mockery of myself to fear and hate ! 

And Mary saw my soul, 
And laughed and said, " Disquiet yourself not, 

'Tis nothing but a little downy owl." 

Sad Aziola ! many an eventide 

Thy music I had heard 
By wood and stream, meadow and mountain side, 
And fields and marshes wide, — 

Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird, 

The soul ever stirred ; 
Unlike and far sweeter than they all : 
Sad Aziola ! from that moment I 
Loved thee and thy sad cry. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



A FRAGMENT. 



They were two cousins, almost like two twins, 
Except that from the catalogue of sins 
Nature had razed their love — which could not he 
But by dissevering their nativity. 
And so they grew together, like two flowers 
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers 
Lull or awaken in their purple prime, 
Which the same hand will gather — the same clime 
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see 
All those who love, — and who e'er loved like thee, 
Fiordispina ? Scarcely Cosimo, 
Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow 
The ardours of a vision which obscure 
The very idol of its portraiture ; 
He faints, dissolved into a sense of love ; 
But thou art as a planet sphered above, 
But thou art Love itself — ruling the motion 
Of his subjected spirit : such emotion 
Must end in sin or Borrow, if sweet May 
Had not brought forth this morn — your wedding- 
day. 



TO 



! f 



One word is too often profaned 

P'or me to profane it, 
One feeling too falsely disdained 

For thee to disdain it. 
One hope is too like despair 

For prudence to smother, 
And Pity from thee more dear 

Than that from another. 

I can give not what men call love, 

But wilt thou accept not 
The worship the heart lifts above 

And the Heavens reject not: 
The desire of the moth for the stai 

Of the night for the morrow, 
The devotion to something afar 

From the sphere of our sorrow 



GOOD-NIGHT. 



Good-night ? ah ! no ; the hour is ill 
Which severs those it should unite ; 

Let us remain together still, 
Then it will be good night. 

How can I call the lone night good, 

Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight \ 

Be it not said, thought, understood, 
That it will be good night. 

To hearts which near each other move 
From evening close to morning light, 

The night is good ; because, my love, 
They never say good-night. 



LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR. 

yl arise from dreams of thee 
* In the first sweet sleep of night, 
When the winds are breathing low, 
And the stars are shining bright. 
I arise from dreams of thee, 
And a spirit in my feet 
Has led me — who knows how ? 
To thy chamber window, sweet ! 

The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream — 
The champak odours fail 
Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 
The nightingale's complaint, 
It dies upon her heart, 
As I must die on thine, 
beloved as thou art ! 

lift me from the grass ! 

1 die, I faint, I fail ! 

Let thy love in kisses rain 
On my lips and eyelids pale. 
My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 
My heart beats loud and fast, 
Oh ! press it close to thine a^gahi, 
Where it will break at last. 



MUSIC. 



I pant for the music which is divine, 
My heart in its thirst is a dying flower ; 

Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine, 
Loosen the notes in a silver shower ; 

Like a herbless plain for the gentle rain, 

I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. 

Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound, 
More, O more ! — I am thirsting yet, 

It loosens the serpent which care has bound 
Upon my heart, to stifle it ; 

The dissolving strain, through every vein, 

Passes into my heart and brain. 

As the scent of a violet withered up, 

Which grew by the brink of a silver lake, 

When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup, 
And mist there was none its thirst to slake — 

And the violet lay dead while the odour flew 

On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue — 

As one who drinks from a charmed cup 

Of foaming, and sparkling, and murmuring wine, 

Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up, 
Invites to love with her kiss divine. 



300 



POEMS WIUTTUN IN 1821. 



TO 



Tuf. serpent is shut out from paradise. 

The wounded deer must seek the herd no more 

In which its heart-core lies : 
The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower, 
Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs 

Fled in the April hour. 
1 too. must seldom seek again 
Near happy friends a mitigated pain. 

ii. 
Of hatred I am proud, — with scorn content ; 
Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown 

Itself indifferent. 
But, not to speak of love, pity alone 
Can break a spirit already more than bent. 

The miserable one 
Turns the mind's poison into food, — 
Its medicine is tears, — its evil good. 

in. 
Therefore if now I see you seldomer, 
Dear friends, dear friend ! know that I only fly 

Your looks because they stir 
Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die: 
The very comfort that they minister 

I scarce can bear ; yet I, 
So deeply is the arrow gone, 
Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn. 

IV. 

When I return to my cold home, you ask 
Why I am not as I have ever been ? 

You spoil me for the task 
Of acting a forced part on life's dull scene, — 
Of wearing on my brow the idle mask 

Of author, great or mean, 
In the world's Carnival. I sought 
Peace thus, and but in you I found it not. 

v. 
Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot 
With various flowers, and every one still said, 

" She loves me, loves me not *." 

And if this meant a vision long since fled — 

If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought — 

If it meant — but I dread 
To speak what you may know too well : 
Still there was truth in the sad oracle. 

VI. 

The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home ; 
No bird so wild, but has its quiet nest, 

When it no more would roam ; 
The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast 
Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam, 

And thus, at length, find rest : 
Doubtless there is a place of peace 
Where my weak heart and all its throbs will cease. 

VII. 

I asked her, yesterday, if she believed 
That I had resolution. One who had 

Would ne'er have thus relieved 
His heart with words, — but what his judgment bade 
Would do, and leave the scorner unreprieved 

These verses are too sad 
To send to you, but that I know, 
Happy yourself, you feel another's woe. 



A LAMENT. 



O Would ! life ! time ! 
On whose last steps I climb, 

Trembling at that where I had stood before ; 
When will return the glory of your prime ? 
No moi'e— Oh, never more ! 

Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight : 

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, 
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight 
No more — Oh, never more ! 



SONNET. 

POLITICAL GREATNESS. 

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, 
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts, 
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame ; 
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts : 
History is but the shadow of their shame ; 
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts 
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet, 
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery 
Of their own likeness. What are numbers, knit 
By force or custom ? Man who man would be, 
Must rule the empire of himself ! in it 
Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy 
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. 



DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. 

Orphan hours, the year is dead, 
Come and sigh, come and weep ! 

Merry hours, smile instead, 
For the year is but asleep: 

See, it smiles as it is sleeping, 

Mocking your untimely weeping. 

As an earthquake rocks a corse 

In its coffin in the clay, 
So White Winter, that rough nurse, 

Rocks the dead-cold year to-day ; 
Solemn hours ! wail aloud 
For your mother in her shroud. 

As the wild air stirs and sways 
The tree-swung cradle of a child, 

So the breath of these rude days 
Rocks the year : — be calm and mild, 

Trembling hours ; she will arise 

With new love within her eyes. 

January grey is here, 

Like a sexton by her grave ; 

February bears the bier, 

March with grief doth howl and rave, 

And April weeps — but, O ye hours! 

Follow with May's fairest flowers. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 1821. 



301 



NOTE ON THE POEMS OF 1821 



BY THE EDITOR. 



My task becomes inexpressibly painful as the 
year draws near that which sealed our earthly 
fate ; and each poem and each event it records, 
has a real or mysterious connexion with the fatal 
catastrophe. I feel that I am incapable of putting 
on paper the history of those times. The heart of 
the man, abhorred of the poet, 

Who could peep and botanize upon his mother's grave, 

does not appear to me less inexplicably framed 
than that of one who can dissect and probe past 
woes, and repeat to the public ear the groans 
drawn from them in the throes of their agony. 

The year 1821 was spent in Pisa, or at the baths 
of San Giuliano. We were not, as our wont had 
been, alone — friends had gathered round us. 
Nearly all are dead ; and when memory recurs to 
the past, she wanders among tombs : the genius 
with all his blighting errors and mighty powers ; 
the companion of Shelley's ocean-wanderings, and 
the sharer of his fate, than whom no man ever 
existed more gentle, generous, and fearless ; and 
others, who found in Shelley's society, and in his 
great knowledge and warm sympathy, delight, in- 
struction and solace, have joined him beyond the 
grave. A few survive who have felt life a desert 
since he left it. What misfortune can equal death ? 
Change can convert every other into a blessing, or 
heal its sting — death alone has no cure ; it shakes 
the foundations of the earth on which we tread, it 
destroys its beauty, it casts down our shelter, it 
exposes us bare to desolation ; when those we love 
have passed into eternity, " life is the desert and 
the solitude," in which we are forced to linger — 
but never find comfort more. 

There is much in the Adonais which seems now 
more applicable to Shelley himself, than to the 
young and gifted poet whom he mourned. The 
poetic view he takes of death, and the lofty scorn 
he displays towards his calumniators, are as a 



prophecy on his own destiny, when received among 
immortal names, and the poisonous breath of 
critics has vanished into emptiness before the 
fame he inherits. 

Shelley's favourite taste was boating ; when 
living near the Thames, or by the lake of Geneva, 
much of his life was spent on the water. On the 
shore of every lake, or stream, or sea, near which 
he dwelt, he had a boat moored. He had latterly 
enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no 
pleasure-boats on the Arno, and the shallowness 
of its waters except in winter time, when the stream 
is too turbid and impetuous for boating, rendered 
it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. 
Shelley, however, overcame the difficulty; he, 
together with a friend, contrived a boat such as 
the huntsmen carry about with them in the 
Maremma, to cross the sluggish but deep streams 
that intersect the forests, a boat of laths and 
pitched canvas ; it held three persons, and he 
was often seen on the Arno in it, to the horror 
of the Italians, who remonstrated on the danger, 
and could not understand how any one could take 
pleasure in an exercise that risked life. " Ma va 
per la vita ! " they exclaimed. I little thought 
how true their words would prove. He once 
ventured with a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm 
day, down the Arno and round the coast, to Leghorn, 
which by keeping close in shore was very practica- 
ble. They returned to Pisa by the canal, when, 
missing the direct cut, they got entangled among 
weeds, and the boat upset ; a wetting was all the 
harm done, except that the intense cold of his 
drenched clothes made Shelley faint. Once I 
went down with him to the mouth of the Arno, 
where the stream, then high and swift, met the 
tideless sea and disturbed its sluggish waters ; it 
was a waste and dreary scene ; the desert sand 
stretched into a point surrounded by waves that 
broke idly though perpetually around ; it was a 



302 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 18-21. 



scene very similar to Lidoj of which he had 
said, — 

1 low ill waite 

Ami solitary places; whore wo tasto 
The pleasure of believing what WO B& 

is boundless, as we wish our souls to be , 
Atnl snob was this wide oeean, and this shore 
More barren than its billon >. 

OttC little boat was of greater use, unaccompanied 
by any danger, when we removed to the baths. 
Some friends lived at the village of Pugnano, four 
miles off, and we went to and fro to see them, in our 
boat, by the canal ; which, fed by the Serchio,\vas, 
though an artificial, a full and picturesque stream, 
making its way under verdant banks sheltered, by 
trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring 
waters. By day, multitudes of ephemera darted 
to and fro on the surface ; at night, the fire-flies 
came out among the shrubs on the banks ; the 
cicale at noon day kept up their hum ; the aziola 
cooed in the quiet evening. It was a pleasant 
summer, bright in all but Shelley's health and in- 
constant spirits ; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, 
and became more and more attached to the part 
of the country where chance appeared to cast us. 
Sometimes he projected taking a farm, situated on 
the height of one of the near hills, surrounded by 
chesnut and pine woods, and overlooking a wide 
extent of country ; or of settling still further in 
the maritime Apennines, at Massa. Several of 
his slighter and unfinished poems were inspired 
by these scenes, and by the companions around us. 
It is the nature of that poetry however which over- 
flows from the soul oftener to express sorrow and 
regret than joy ; for it is when oppressed by the 
weight of life, and away from those he loves, that 
the poet has recourse to the solace of expression 
in verse. 

Still Shelley's passion was the ocean ; and he 
wished that our summers, instead of being passed 
among the hills near Pisa, should be spent on the 



shores of the sea. It was very difficult to find a 
spot. We shrank from Naples from a fear that the 
heats would disagree with Percy ; Leghorn had 
lest its only attraction, since our friends who had 
resided there were returned to England ; and 
Monte Nero being the resort of many English, we 
did not wish to find ourselves in the midst of a 
colony of chance travellers. No one then thought 
it possible to reside at Via Reggio, which latterly 
has become a summer resort. The low lands and 
bad air of Maremma stretch the whole length of 
the western shores of the Mediterranean, till broken 
by the rocks and hills of Spezia. It was a vague 
idea ; but Shelley suggested an excursion to Spezia, 
to see whether it would be feasible to spend a 
summer there. The beauty of the bay enchanted 
him — we saw no house to suit us— but the notion 
took root, and many circumstances, enchained as 
by fatality, occurred to urge him to execute it. 

He looked forward this autumn with great 
pleasure to the prospect of a visit from Leigh Hunt. 
When Shelley visited Lord Byron at Ravenna, 
the latter had suggested his coming out, together 
with the plan of a periodical work, in which they 
should all join. Shelley saw a prospect of good 
for the fortunes of his friend, and pleasure in his 
society, and instantly exerted himself to have the 
plan executed. He did not intend himself joining 
in the work ; partly from pride, not wishing to 
have the air of acquiring readers for his poetry by 
associating it with the compositions of more popular 
writers ; and, also, because he might feel shackled 
in the free expression of his opinions, if any friends 
were to be compromised ; by those opinions, 
carried even to their utmost extent, he wished to 
live and die, as being in his conviction not only 
true, but such as alone would conduce to the moral 
improvement and happiness of mankind. The 
sale of the work might, meanwhile, either really or 
supposedly, be injured by the free expression of 
his thoughts, and this evil he resolved to avoid. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXXIT. 



THE ZUCCA*. 



Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring, 
And infant Winter laughed upon the land 

All cloudlessly and cold ; — when I, desiring 
More in this world than any understand, 

Wept o'er the beauty, which, like sea retiring, 
Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand 

Of my poor heart, and o'er the grass and flowers 

Pale for the falsehood of the flattering hours. 

Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep 

The instability of all but weeping ; 
And on the earth lulled in her winter sleep 

I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping. 
Too happy Earth ! over thy face shall creep 

The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping 
From unremembered dreams shalt [ ] see 

No death divide thy immortality. 

I loved — no, I mean not one of ye, 
Or any earthly one, though ye are dear 

As human heart to human heart may be ; — 
I loved, I know not what— but this low sphere, 

And all that it contains, contains not thee, 

Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere, 

Dim object of my soul's idolatry. 

By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou 
flowest, 

Neither to be contained, delayed, or hidden, 
Making divine the loftiest and the lowest, 

When for a moment thou art not forbidden 
To live within the life which thou bestowest, 

And leaving noblest things, vacant and chidden, 
Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight, 
Blank as the sun after the birth of night. 

In winds, and trees, and streams, and all' things 
common, 

In music, and the sweet unconscious tone 
Of animals, and voices which are human, 

Meant to express some feelings of their own ; 
In the soft motions and rare smile of woman, 

In flowers and leaves, and in the fresh grass shown, 
Or dying in the autumn, I the most 
A bore thee present, or lament thee lost. 

* Pumpkin. 



I And thus I went lamenting, when I saw 

A plant upon the river's margin lie, 
| Like one who loved beyond his Nature's law, 
And in despair had cast him down to die ; 
| Its leaves which had outlived the frost, the thaw 
Had blighted as a heart which hatred's eye 
Can blast not, but which pity kills ; the dew 
Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true. 

The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth 
Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast 



I bore it to my chamber, and I planted 

It in a vase full of the lightest mould ; 

The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted 

Fell through the window panes, disrobed ol cold, 
Upon its leaves and flowers; the star which panted 

In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled 
Over the horizon's wave, with looks of light 
Smiled on it from the threshold of the night. 

The mitigated influences of air 

And light revived the plant, and from it grew 
Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair, 

Full as a cup with the vine's burning dew, 
O'erflowed with golden colours ; an atmosphere 

Of vital warmth, infolded it anew, 
And every impulse sent to every part 
The unbeheld pulsations of its heart. 

Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong, 
Even if the sun and air had smiled not on it ; 

For one wept o'er it all the winter long 

Tears pure as Heaven's rain, which fell upon it 

Hour after hour ; for sounds of softest song 
Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it 

To leave the gentle lips on which it slept, 

Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept. 

Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and 
flowers 

On which he wept, the while the savage storm 
Waked by the darkest of December's hours 

Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm ; 
The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers, 

The fish were frozen in the pools, the form 
Of every summer plant was dead [ J 

Whilst this * * * 

January, 1822. 



3'»4 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR, 



Akui. to Miranda : — Take 

This slave of music, for the sake 

Of him, who is the slave of thee ; 

And teach it all the harmony 

In which thou canst, and only thou, 

Make the delighted spirit glow. 

Till joy denies itself again, 

And, too intense, is turned to pain. 

For by permission and command 

Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 

Poor Ariel sends this silent token 

Of more than ever can be spoken ; 

Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who 

From life to life must still pursue 

Y'our happiness, for thus alone 

Can Ariel ever find his own ; 

From Prospero's enchanted cell, 

As the mighty verses tell, 

To the throne of Naples he 

Lit you o'er the trackless sea, 

Flitting on, your prow before, 

Like a living meteor. 

When you die, the silent Moon, 

In her interlunar swoon, 

Is not sadder in her cell 

Than deserted Ariel ; 

When you live again on earth, 

Like an unseen Star of birth, 

Ariel guides you o'er the sea 

Of life from your nativity : 

Many changes have been run 

Since Ferdinand and you begun 

Your course of love, and Ai'iel still 

Has tracked your steps and served your will. 

Now in humbler, happier lot, 

This is all remembered not ; 

And now, alas ! the poor sprite is 

Imprisoned for some fault of his 

In a body like a grave — 

From you, he only dai'es to crave, 

For his service and his sorrow, 

A smile to-day, a song to-morrow. 

The artist who this idol wrought, 

To echo all harmonious thought, 

Felled a tree, while on the steep 

The woods were in their winter sleep, 

Hocked in that repose divine 

On the wind-swept Apennine ; 

And dreaming, some of autumn past. 

And some of spring approaching fast, 

And some of April buds and showers, 

And some of songs in July bowers, 

And all of love ; and so this tree, — 

O that such our death may be ! — 

Died in sleep, and felt no pain, 

To live in happier form again : 

From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, 

The artist wrought this loved Guitar, 

And taught it justly to reply, 

To all who question skilfully, 

In language gentle as thine own ; 

Whispering in enamoured tone 



Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 
And summer winds iu sylvan cells ; 
For it had learnt all harmonies 
Of the plains and of the skies, 
Of the forests and the mountains, 
And the many-voiced fountains ; 
The clearest echoes of the hills, 
The softest notes of falling rills, 
The melodies of birds and" bees, 
The murmuring of summer seas, 
And pattering rain, and breathing dew, 
And airs of evening ; and it knew 
That seldom -heard mysterious sound, 
Which, driven on its diurnal round, 
As it floats through boundless day, 
Our world enkindles on its way — 
All this it knows, but will not tell 
To those who cannot question well 
The spirit that inhabits it; 
It talks according to the wit 
Of its companions ; and no more 
Is heard thaa. has been felt before, 
By those who tempt it to betray 
These secrets of an elder day. 
But, sweetly as its answers will 
Flatter hands of perfect skill, 
It keeps its highest, holiest tone 
For our beloved friend alone. 



THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER 
PATIENT. 



" Sleep, sleep on ! forget thy pain ; 

My hand is on thy brow, 
My spirit on thy brain ; 
My pity on thy heart, poor friend ; 

And from my fingers flow 
The powers of life, and like a sign, 

Seal thee from thine hour of woe ; 
And brood on thee, but may not blend 
With thine. 

" Sleep, sleep on ! I love thee not ; 

But when I think that he 
Who made and makes my lot 
As full of flowers, as thine of weeds, 

Might have been lost like thee ; 
And that a hand which was not mine 

Might then have chased his agony 
As I another's — my heart bleeds 
For thine. 

" Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of 

The dead and the unborn 
Forget thy life and love ; 
Forget that thou must wake for ever ; 

Forget the world's dull scorn ; 
Forget lost health, and the divine 

Feelings which died in youth's brief morn 
And forget me, for I can never 
Be thine. 



DRAMATIC FRAGMENT. 



nor. 



« Like a cloud big with a May shower, 
My soul weeps healing rain 

On thee, thou withered flower; 

It breathes mute music on thy sleep ; 
Its odour calms thy brain ! 

Its light within thy gloomy breast 
Spreads like a second youth again. 

By mine thy being is to its deep 
Possest. 



" The spell is done. How feel you now J" 

" Better — Quite well," replied 
The sleeper,—" What would do 
You good when suffering and awake ? 

What cure your head and side ? — " 
"'Twould kill me what would cure my pain ; 

And as I must on earth abide 
Awhile, yet tempt me not to break 
My chain." 



FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. 



Thk following fragments are part of a Drama, under- 
taken for the amusement of the individuals who com- 
posed our intimate society, but left unfinished. I have 
preserved a sketch of the story as far as it had been 
shadowed in the poet's mind. 

An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the 
Indian Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man 



of savage but noble nature. She becomes enamoured 
of him ; and he, inconstant to his mortal love, for 
awhile returns her passion; but at length, recalling the 
memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, 
he escapes from the enchanted island and returns to 
his lady. His mode of life makes him again go to sea, 
and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to bring 
him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her island. 



Scene, be/ore the Cavern of the Indian Enchantress. 
The Enchantress comes forth. 

ENCHANTRESS. 

He came like a dream in the dawn of life, 

He fled like a shadow before its noon ; 
He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife, 
And I wander and wane like the weary moon. 
O sweet Echo, wake, 
And for my sake 
Make answer the while my heart shall break ! 

But my heart has a music which Echo's lips, 

Though tender and true, yet can answer not, 

And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse 

Can return not the kiss by his now forgot ; 

Sweet lips ! he who hath 

On my desolate path 

Cast the darkness of absence^ worse than death ! 

The Enchantress makes her spell .• she is answered by a 
Spirit. 

SPIRIT. 
Within the silent, centre of the earth 
My mansion is ; where I have lived insphered 
From the beginning, and around my sleep 
Have woven all the wondrous imagery 
Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world ; 
Infinite depths of unknown elements 
Massed into one impenetrable mask ; 
Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins 
Of gold, and stone, and adamantine iron. 
And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven 
I have wrought mountains, seas, waves, and clouds, 
And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns 
In the dark space of interstellar air. 

A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate's fate, leads., 
in a mysterious manner, the iady of his Jove to the En- 



chanted Isle. She is accompanied by a youth, who loves 
her, but whose passion she returns only with a sisterly 
affection. The ensuing scene takes place between them on 
their arrival at the Isle. 

INDIAN YOUTH AND LADY. 
INDIAN. 

And if my grief should still be dearer to me 
Than all the pleasures in the world beside, 
Why would you lighten it ? — 



I offer only 
That which I seek, some human sympathy 
In this mysterious island. 

INDIAN. 

Oh ! my friend, 

My sister, my beloved ! What do I say ? 
My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether 
I speak to thee or her. 



Peace, perturbed heart ! 
1 am to thee only as thou to mine, 
The passing Avind which heals the brow at noon, 
And may strike cold into the breast at night, 
Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most, 
Or long soothe could it linger. 



You also loved ? 



But you said 



LADY. 

Loved ! Oh, I love. Methinks 
This word of love is fit for all the world, 
And that for gentle hearts another name 
Would speakof gentler thoughts than the world owns. 
I have loved. 



-MM] 



POEMS WRITTEN IX 1822. 



INDIAN. 

And thou lovest not 1 If so 
Young as thou art, thou canst afford to weep. 

LADY. 

Oh ! would that 1 could claim exemption 

From all the bitterness of that sweet name. 
1 loved, 1 love, ami when L love no more 

Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair 

To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me, 
The embodied vision of the brightest dream, 
Which like a dawn heralds the day of life ; 
The shadow of his presence made my world 
A paradise. All familiar things he touched, 
All common words he spoke, became to me 
Like forms and sounds of a diviner world. 
He was as is the sun in his fierce youth, 
As terrible and lovely as a tempest ; 
He came, and went, and left me what I am. 
Alas ! Why must I think how oft we two 
Have sat together near the river springs, 
Under the green pavilion which the willow 
Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain, 
Strewn by the nurslings that linger there, 
Over that islet paved with flowers and moss, 
While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson 

snow, 
Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine, 
Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own. 

INDIAN. 

Your breath is like soft music, your words are 
The echoes of a voice which on my heart 



Sleeps like a melody of early days. 
Hut as you said — 



He was so awful, yet 
So beautiful in mystery and terror, 
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven 
Soothes the unquiet sea : — and yet not so, 
For he seemed stormy, and would often seem 
A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds ; 
For such his thoughts, and even his actions were ; 
But he was not of them, nor they of him, 
But as they hid his splendour from the earth. 
Some said he was a man of blood and peril, 
And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips. 
More need was there I should be innocent, 
More need that I should be most true and kind, 
And much more need that there should be found one 
To share remorse, and scorn, and solitude, 
And all the ills that wait on those who do 
The tasks of ruin in the world of life. 
He fled, and I have followed him. 

INDIAN. 

Such a one 
Is he who was the winter of my peace. 
But, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart 
From the far hills, where rise the springs of India, 
How didst thou pass the intervening sea 2 



If I be sure I am not dreaming now, 
I should not doubt to say it was a dream 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



TO 



The keen stars were twinkling, 
And the fair moon was rising among them, 
Dear * * * ! 
The guitar was tinkling, 
But the notes were not sweet till you sung them 
Again. 
As the moon's soft splendour 
O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven 
Is thrown, 
So your voice most tender 
To the strings without soul had then given 
Its own. 

The stars will awaken, 
Though the moon sleep a full hour later, 
To-night ; 
No leaf will be shaken 
Whilst the dews of your melody scatter 
Delight. 
Though the sound overpowers, 
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing 
A tone 
Of some world far from ours, 
Where music and moonligh,' and feeling 
Are one. 



THE INVITATION. 



Best and brightest, come away, 

Fairer far than this fair day, 

Which like thee to those in sorrow 

Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 

To the rough year just awake 

In its cradle on the brake. 

The brightest hour of unborn spring, 

Through the winter wandering, 

Found it seems the halcyon morn, 

To hoar February born ; 

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, 

It kissed the forehead of the earth, 

And smiled upon the silent sea, 

And bade the frozen streams be free ; 

And waked to music all their fountains, 

And breathed upon the frozen mountains, 

And like a prophetess of May, 

Strewed flowers upon the barren way, 

Making the wintry world appear 

Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 

Away, away, from men and towns, 
To the wild wood and the downs— 
To the silent wilderness 
Where the soul need not repress 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



307 



Its music, lest it should not find 

An echo in another's mind, 

While the touch of Nature's art 

Harmonizes heart to heart. 

I leave this notice on my door 

For each accustomed visitor : — 

" I am gone into the fields 

To take what this sweet hour yields ;- 

Reflection, you may come to-morrow, 

Sit by the fireside of Sorrow. — 

You with the unpaid bill, Despair, 

You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, 

I will pay you in the grave, 

Death will listen to your stave. — 

Expectation too, be off ! 

To-day is for itself enough ; 

Hope in pity mock not woe 

With smiles, nor follow where I go ; 

Long having lived on thy sweet food, 

At length I find one moment good 

After long pain — with all your love, 

This you never told me of." 

Radiant Sister of the Day, 
Awake ! arise ! and come away ! 
To the wild woods and the plains, 
To the pools where winter rains 
Image all their roof of leaves, 
Where the pine its garland weaves 
Of sapless green, and ivy dun, 
Round stems that never kiss the sun, 
Where the lawns and pastures be 
And the sandhills of the sea, 
Where the melting hoar-frost wets 
The daisy-star that never sets, 
And wind-flowers and violets, 
Which yet join not scent to hue, 
Crown the pale year weak and new ; 
When the night is left behind 
In the deep east, dim and blind, 
And the blue noon is over us, 
And the multitudinous 
Billows murmur at our feet, 
Where the earth and ocean meet, 
And all things seem only one, 
In the universal sun. 



THE RECOLLECTION. 



Now the last day of many days, 
All beautiful and bright as thou, 
The loveliest and the last, is dead, 
Rise, Memory, and write its praise ! 
Up do thy wonted work ! come, trace 
The epitaph of glory fled, 
For now the Earth has changed its face, 
A frown is on the Heaven's brow. 



We wandered to the Pine Forest 
That skirts the Ocean's foam, 

The lightest wind was in its nest, 
The temnest in its home. 



The whispering waves were half asleep, 

The clouds were gone to play, 
And on the bosom of the deep, 

The smile of Heaven lay ; 
It seemed as if the hour were one 

Sent from beyond the skies, 
Which scattered from above the sun 

A lifjht of Paradise. 



We paused amid the pines that stood 

The giants of the waste, 
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude 

As serpents interlaced. 
And soothed by every azure breath, 

That under heaven is blown, 
To harmonies and hues beneath, 

As tender as its own ; 
Now all the tree tops lay asleep, 

Like green waves on the sea, 
As still as in the silent deep 

The ocean woods may be. 



How calm it was ! — the silence there 

By such a chain was bound, 
That even the busy wood-pecker 

Made stiller by her sound 
The inviolable quietness ; 

The breath of peace we drew 
With its soft motion made not less 

The calm that round us grew. 
There seemed from the remotest seat 

Of the wide mountain waste, 
To the soft flower beneath our feet, 

A magic circle traced, 
A spirit interfused around 

A thrilling silent life, 
To momentary peace it bound 

Our mortal nature's strife ; — 
And still I felt the centre of 

The magic circle there, 
Was one fair form that filled with love 

The lifeless atmosphere. 



We paused beside the pools that lie 

Under the forest bough, 
Each seemed as 'twere a little sky 

Gulfed in a world below ; 
A firmament of purple light, 

Which in the dark earth lay, 
More boundless than the depth of night, 

And purer than the day — 
In which the lovely forests grew, 

As in the upper air, 
More perfect both in shape and hue 

Than any spreading there. 
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn 

And through the dark green wood 
The white sun twinkling like the dawn 

Out of a speckled cloud. 
Sweet views which in our world above 

Can never well be seen, 
Were imaged by the water's love 

Of that fair forest green. 
And all was interfused beneath 

With an Elysian glow, 
An atmosphere without a breath, 

A softer day below. 



308 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



like one beloved the eeene had lent 


When hearts have once mingled, 


To the dark, water's breast. 


Love first leaves the well-built nest ; 


[ta ivcvv leaf end lineament 


The weak one is singled 


With more thaw truth expreet, 


To endure what it once possest. 


Until en envious wind crept by, 


0, Love ! who bewailest 


Like an onweloome thought, 


The frailty of all things here, 


Which from the mind's too faithful eye 


Why choose you the frailest 


Blots one dear image out. 


For your cradle, your home, and your bier ? 


Though thou art ever fair and kind, 




The forests ever green, 


Its passions will rock thee, 


. :'t is pence in S 's mind, 


As the storms rock the ravens on high : 


Than eaim in waters seen. 


Bright reason will mock thee, 




Like the sun from a wintry sky. 


February 2, 1889. 


From thy nest every rafter 




Will rot, and thine eagle home 




Leave thee naked to laughter, 






When leaves fall and cold winds come. 


A SONG. 







t 


A widow bird sate mourning for her love 




Upon a wintry bough ; 
The frozen wind crept on above, 


THE ISLE. 


The freezing stream below. 







There was a little lawny islet 


There was no leaf upon the forest bare, 


By anemone and violet, 


No flower upon the ground, 


Like mosaic, paven : 


And little motion in the air 


And its roof was flowers and leaves 


Except the mill-wheel's sound. 


Which the summer's breath en weaves, 



LINES. 

When the lamp is shattered, 
The light in the dust lies dead — 

When the cloud is scattered, 
The rainbow's glory is shed. 

When the lute is broken, 
Sweet tones are remembered not ; 

When the lips have spoken, 
Loved accents are soon forgot. 

As music and splendour 
Survive not the lamp and the lute, 

The heart's echoes render 
No song when the spirit is mute :— r 

No song but sad dirges, 
Like the wind through a ruined cell, 

Or the mournful surges 
That rin£ the dead seaman's knell. 



Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze 
Pierce the pines and tallest trees, 

Each a gem engraven. 
Girt by many an azure wave 
With which the clouds and mountains pave 

A lake's blue chasm. 



A DIRGE. 

Rough wind, that moanest loud 

Grief too sad for song ; 
Wild wind, when sullen cloud 
Knells all the night long ; 
Sad storm, whose tears are vain, 
Bare woods, whose branches stain, 
Deep caves and dreary main, 

Wail, for the world's wrong ! 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 



:;!)•» 



CHARLES THE FIRST, 

8 dfragnunt. 



ACT I. 



SCENE I. 
Tlie Pageant to celebrate the arrival oj the Queen. 

A PURSUIVANT. 

Place for the Marshal of the Masque ! 

FIRST SPEAKER. 

What thinkest thou of this quaint masque, which 

turns 
Like morning from the shadow of the night, 
The night to day, and London to a place 
Of peace and joy ? 

SECOND SPEAKER. 

And Hell to Heaven. 
Eight years are gone, 

And they seem hours, since in this populous street 
I trod on grass made green by summer's rain, 
For the red plague kept state within that palace 
Where now reigns vanity — in nine years more 
The roots will be refreshed with civil blood ; 
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven 
That sin and wrongs wound as an orphan's cry, 
The patience of the great Avenger's ear. 

THIRD SPEAKER [a t/OUth). 

Yet, father, 'tis a happy sight to see, 

Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden 

By God or man ; — 'tis like the bright procession 

Of skiey visions in a solemn dream 

From which men wake as from a paradise, 

And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life. 

If God be good, wherefore should this be evil ? 

And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw 

Unseasonable poison from the flowers 

Which bloom so rarely in this barren world ? 

Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the 

present 
Dark as the future ! — 
****** 
When avarice and tyranny, vigilant fear, 



And open-eyed conspiracy, lie sleeping 
As on Hell's threshold ; and all gentle thoughts 
Waken to worship him who giveth joys 
With his own gift. 

SECOND SPEAKER. 

How young art thou in this old age of time ! 
How green in this grey world ! Canst thou not think 
Of change in that low scene, in which thou art 
Not a spectator but an actor ? 
The day that dawns in fire will die in storms, 
Even though the noon be calm. My travel's done ; 
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found 
My inn of lasting rest, but thou must still 
Be journeying on in this inclement air. 



FIRST SPEAKER. 



Is the Archbishop. 



That 



SECOND SPEAKER. 

Rather say the Pope. 
London will be soon his Rome : he walks 
As if he trod upon the heads of men. 
He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold ; - 
Beside him moves the Babylonian woman 
Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow, 
Mitred adulterer ! he is joined in sin, 
Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to revenge. 

another citizen {lifting up his eyes). 
Good Lord ! rain it down upon him. 
Amid her ladies walks the papist queen, 
As if her nice feet scorned our English earth. 
There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke. 
L'rd Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry, 
A ad others who made base their English breed 
By vile participation of their honours 
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates. 
When lawyers mask 'tis time for honest men 
To strip the vizor from their purposes. 
****** 






310 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



rot urn speaker (a pursuivant). 
Give plane, give place ! 
You torch-bearers, advance to the great gate. 
Ami then attend the Marshal of the Masque 
Into the Royal presence. 



Of thk 



FIFTH speaker (a hue student). 

What thinkest thou 
quaint show of ours, my aged friend l . 



FIRST SPEAKER. 



I will not think but that onr country's wounds 
May vet be healed — The king is just and gracious, 
Though wicked counsels now pervert his will : 
These once cast off — 



SECOND SPEAKER. 



As adders cast their skins 
And keep their venom, so kings often change ; 
Councils and councillors hang on one another, 
Hiding the loathsome [ ] 

Like the base patchwork of a leper's rags. 



THIRD SPEAKER. 



Oh, still those dissonant thoughts — List, loud music 
Grows on the enchanted air ! And see, the torches 
Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided 
Like waves before an admiral's prow. 



ANOTHER SPEAKER. 



To the Marshal of the Masque 



Give place — 



THIRD SPEAKER. 



How glorious ! See those thronging chariots 
Rolling like painted clouds before the wind : 

Some are 
Like curved shells dyed by the azure depths 
Of Indian seas ; some like the new-born moon ; 
And some like cars in which the Romans climbed 
(Canopied by Victory's eagle- wings outspread) 
The Capitolian — See how gloriously 
The mettled horses in the torchlight stir 
Their gallant riders, while they check their pride, 
Like shapes of some diviner element ! 

SECOND SPEAKER. 

Aye, there they are — 
Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees, 
Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm, 
On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows. 
Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, 
Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart. 
These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, 
Who toil not, neither do they spin, — unless 
It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal. 
Here is the surfeit which to them who earn 
The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves 
The tithe that will support them till they crawl 
Back to its cold hard bosom. Here is health 
Followed by grim disease, glory by shame, 
Waste by lank famine, wealth by squalid want, 
And England's sin by England's punishment. 
And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone, 
Lo, giving substance to my words, behold 



At once the sign and the thing signified — 

A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts, 

Horsed anon stumbling shapes, carted with dung, 

Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins 

And rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral 

Of this presentiment, and bring up the r^ar 

Of painted pomp with misery ! 



'Tis but 
The anti-masque, and serves as discords do 
In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers 
If they succeeded not to Winter's flaw ; 
Or day unchanged by night ; or joy itself 
Without the touch of sorrow ? 



SCENE II. 
A Chamber in Whitehall. 

Enter the King, Quee.v, Laud, Wentworth, and Archy. 



Thanks, gentlemen. I heartily accept 

This token of your service : your gay masque 

Was performed gallantly. 

QUERN. 

And, gentlemen, 
Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint 

pageant 
Rose on me like the figures of past years, 
Treading their still path back to infancy, 
More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer 
The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept 
To think I was in Paris, where these shows 
Are well devised — such as I was ere yet 
My young heart shared with [ ] the task, 

The careful weight of this great monarchy. 
There, gentlemen, between the sovereign's pleasure 
And that which it regards, no clamour lifts 
Its proud interposition. 



KING. 

My lord of Canterbury. 

ARCHY. 

The fool is here. 



I crave permission of your Majesty 
To order that this insolent fellow be 
Chastised : he mocks the sacred character, 
Scoffs at the stake, and — 



What, my Archy ! 
He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears, 
Yet with a quaint and graceful licence— Prithee 
For this once do not as Prynne would, were he 
Primate of England. 

He lives in his own world ; and, like a parrot, 
Hung in his gilded prison from the window 



CHARLES TJIK FIR8T. 



311 



Of a queen's bower over the public way, 
Blasphemes with a bird's mind : — his words, like 

arrows 
Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit, 
Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy. 

QUEEN. 

Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence 

Ten minutes in the rain : be it your penance 

To bring news how the world goes there. Poor 

Archy ! 
He weaves about himself a world of mirth 
Out of this wreck of ours. 



I take with patience, as my Master did, 
All scoffs permitted from above. 



My lord, 
Pray overlook these papers. Archy's words 
Had wings, but these have talons. 

QUEEN. 

And the lion 
That wears them must be tamed. My dearest 

lord, 
I see the new-born courage in your eye 
Armed to strike dead the spirit of the time. 



Do thou persist : for, faint but in resolve, 

And it were better thou hadst still remained 

The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs 

The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer ; 

And Opportunity, that empty wolf, 

Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions, 

Even to the disposition of thy purpose, 

And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel ; 

And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak, 

Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace, 

And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss, 

As when she keeps the company of rebels, 

Who think that she is fear. This do, lest we 

Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle 

In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream 

Out of our worshipped state. 



* * * And if this suffice not, 

Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst 

They may lick up that scum of schismatics. 

I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring 

What we possess, still prate of christian peace, 

As if those dreadful messengers of wrath, 

Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong, 

Should be let loose against innocent sleep 

Of templed cities and the smiling fields, 

For some poor argument of policy 

Which touches our own profit or our pride, 

Where indeed it were christian charity 

To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand : 

And when our great Redeemer, when our God 

Is scorned in his immediate ministers, 

They talk of peace ! 

Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now. 

****** 



QUEEN. 

My beloved lord, 

Have you not noted that the fool of late 

Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words 

Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears? 

What can it mean ? I should be loth to think 

Some factious slave had tutored him. 



It partly is, 
That our minds piece the vacant intervals 
Of his wild words with their own fashioning ; 
As in the imagery of summer clouds, 
Or coals in the winter fire, idlers find 
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts : 
And partly, that the terrors of the time 
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits ; 
And in the lightest and the least, may best 
Be seen the current of the coming wind. 

QUEEN. 

Your brain is overwrought with these deep 

thoughts. 
Come, I will sing to you ; let us go try 
These airs from Italy, — and you shall see 
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep, 
Stamped on the heart by never-erring love ; 
Liker than any Vandyke ever made, 
A pattern to the unborn age of thee, 
Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy 
A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow, 
Did I not think that after we were dead 
Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that 
The cares we waste upon our heavy crown 
Would make it light and glorious as a wreath 
Of heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow. 



Dear Henrietta ! 

* * * 



SCENE III. 

Hampden, Pym, Cromwell, and the younger Vane. 

HAMPDEN. 

England, farewell ! thou, who hast been my cradle, 

Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave I 

I held what I inherited in thee 

As pawn for that inheritance of freedom 

Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile : — 

How can I call thee England, or my country \ 

Does the wind hold ? 



The vanes sit steady 
Upon the Abbey-towers. The silver lightnings 
Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke, *■ 
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air. 
Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged clouds 
Sailing athwart St. Margaret's. 

HAMPDEN. 

Hail, fleet herald 
Of tempest ! that wild pilot who shall guide 
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee. 



•M-J 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



Beyond the shot of tyranny ! And thou, 

Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic, 

Athwart its /.ones of tempest and of calm, 
Bright as the path to a beloved homo, 
O light us to the isles of th' evening land ! 
Like floating Edens, cradled in the glimmer 
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years 
Tinged by departing Hope, they gleam ! Lone 

regions, 
Where power's poor dupes and victims yet have 

never 
Propitiated the savage {'ear of kings 
With purest blood 01 noblest hearts ; whose dew 
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake 
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns ; 
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo 
Of formal blasphemies ; nor impious rites 
Wrest man's free worship from the God who lores 
Towards the worm, who envies us his love, 
Receive thou, young [ ] of Paradise, 

These exiles from the old and sinful world : 



This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights 

Dart mitigated influence through the veil 

Of pale-blue atmosphere ; whose tears keep green 

The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth ; 

This vaporous horizon, whose dim round 

Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea, 

Repelling invasion from the sacred towers; 

Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate, 

A low dark roof, a damp and narrow vault: 

The mighty universe becomes a cell 

Too narrow for the soul that owns no master. 

While the loathliest spot 
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest 
Of cradled peace built on the mountain tops, 
To which the eagle-spirits of the free, 
Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn 

the storm 
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth, 
Return to brood over the [ ] thoughts 

That cannot die, and may not be repelled. 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



313 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



Swift as a spirit hastening to his task 
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth 
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask 

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth — 
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows 
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth 

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, 

To which the birds tempered their matin lay. 

All flowers in field or forest which unclose 

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, 
Swinging their censers in the element, 
With orient incense lit by the new ray 

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent 
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air ; 
And, in succession due, did continent, 

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear 
The form and character of mortal mould, 
Rise as the sun their father x'ose, to bear 

Their portion of the toil, which he of old 
Took as his own and then imposed on them : 
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold 

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem 
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep 
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem 

Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep 

Of a green Apennine : before me fled 

The night ; behind me rose the day ; the deep 

Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, 
When a strange trance over my fancy grew 
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread 

Was so transparent that the scene came through 
As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn 
O'er evening hills, they glimmer j and I knew 

That I had felt the freshness of that dawn 
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, 
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn 

Under the self-same bough, and heard as there 
The birds, the fountains, and the ocean hold 
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air, 
And then a vision on my brain was rolled. 



As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, 
This was the tenour of my waking dream : — 
Methought I sate beside a public way 

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream 
Of people there was hurrying to and fro, 
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, 

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know 
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why 
He made one of the multitude, and so 

Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky 
One of the million leaves of summer's bier ; 
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, 

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear : 

Some flying from the thing they feared, and some 

Seeking the object of another's fear ; 

And others as with steps towards the tomb, 
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, 
And others mournfully within the gloom 

Of their own shadow walked and called it death ; 
And some fled from it as it were a ghost, 
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath : 

But more, with motions which each other crost, 
Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, 
Or birds within the noon-day ether lost, 

Upon that path where flowers never grew, — 
And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, 
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew 

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst ; 

Nor felt the bx^eeze which from the forest told 

Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed, 

With over-arching elms and caverns cold, 

And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they 

Pursued their serious folly as of old. 

And as I gazed, methought that in the way 
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June 
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day, 

And a cold glare intenser than the noon, 
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light 
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon 



:ju 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



When on the sunlit limits of the night 
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air. 
And whilst the Bleeping tempest gathers might, 

Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear 

The ghost of its dead mother, whoso dim form 

Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair, — 

So eame a chariot on the silent storm 

Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape 

So sate within, as one whom years deform, 

Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, 

Crouching within the shadow of a tomb ; 

And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape 

Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom 
Tempering the light :upon the chariot beam 
A Janus- visaged shadow did assume 

The guidance of that wonder-winged team ; 
The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings 
Were lost: — I heard alone on the air's soft 
stream 

The music of their ever-moving wings. 

All the four faces of that charioteer 

Had their eyes banded ; little profit brings 

Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, 
Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun 
Or that with banded eyes could pierce the 
sphere 

Of all that is, has been, or will be done ; 
So ill was the car guided — but it past 
With solemn speed majestically on. 

The crowd gave way, and T arose aghast, 
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance j 
And saw, like clouds upon the thunder's blast, 

The million with fierce song and maniac dance 
Raging around — such seemed the jubilee 
As when, to meet some conqueror's advance, 

Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea 
From senate-house, and forum, and theatre, 
When [ ] upon the free 

Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear. 
Nor wanted here the just similitude 
Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er 

The chariot rolled, a captive multitude 

Was driven ; — all those who had grown old in power 

Or misery, — all who had then- age subdued 

By action or by suffering, and whose hour 

Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe, 

So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower ; — 

All those whose fame or infamy must grow 
Till the great winter lay the form and name 
Of this green earth with them for ever low ; — 

All but the sacred few who could not tame 
Their spirits to the conquerors — but as soon 
As they haH touched the world with living flame, 



Fled back like eagles to their native noon, 

Or those win) put aside the diadem 

Of earthly thrones or gems [ ] 

Wei'e there, of Athens or Jerusalem, 

Were neither 'mid the mighty captives seen, 

Nor 'mid the ribald crowd that followed them, 

Nor those who went before fierce and obscene. 
The wild dance maddens in the van, and those 
Who lead it — fleet as shadows on the green, 

Outspeed the chariot, and without repose 
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure 
To savage music, wilder as it grows, 

They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure, 
Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun 
Of that fierce spirit whose unholy leisure 

Was soothed by mischief since the world begun, — 
Throw back their heads and loose their streaming 

haii*; 
And hi their dance round her who dims the sun, 

Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air ; 
i As their feet twinkle they recede, and now 
Bending within each other's atmosphere 

Kindle invisibly — and as they glow, 
'' Like moths by light attracted and repelled, 
Oft to their bright destruction come and go, 

■ s Till like two clouds into one vale impelled 

; That shake the mountains when their lightnings 

mingle 
| And die in rain — the fiery band which held 

Their natures, snaps — the shock still may tingle ; 
One falls and then another in the path 
Senseless — nor is the desolation single, 

Yet ere I can say where — the chariot hath 
Past over them — nor other trace I find 
But as of foam after the ocean's wrath 

Is spent upon the desert shore ; — behind, 
Old men and women foully disarrayed, 
Shake their grey hairs in the insulting wind, 

And follow in the dance, with limbs decayed, 
Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still 
Farther behind and deeper in the shade. 

But not the less with impotence of will 

They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose 

Round them and round each other, and fulfil 

Their part, and in the dust from whence they rose 

Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie, 

And past in these performs what [ ] in those. 

Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry, 
Half to myself I said — And what is this ? 
Whose shape is that within the car? And why — 

I would have added — is all here amiss ? — 

But a voice answered — "Life!" — I turned, and knew 

(0 Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness !) 






THE Tim MI'H OF LIFE. 



315 



That what I thought was an old root which grew 
To strange distortion out of the hill side, 
Was indeed one of those deluded crew, 

And that the grass, which methought hung so wide 
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair, 
And that the holes it vainly sought to hide, 

Were or had been eyes : — " If thou canst, forbear 
To join the dance, which I had well forborne !" 
Said the grim Feature (of my thought aware ;) 

" I will unfold that which to this deep scorn 
Led me and my companions, and relate 
The progress of the pageant since the morn ; 

" If tlnrsv of knowledge shall not then abate, 

Follow it thou even to the night, but I 

Am weary." — Then like one who with the weight 

Of his own words is staggered, wearily 

He paused ; and, ere he could resume, I cried, 

" First, who art thou V — " Before thy memory, 

" I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died, 
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit 
Had been with purer sentiment supplied, 

• Corruption would not now thus much inherit 
Of what was once Rousseau, — nor this disguise 
Stained that which ought to have disdained to 
wear it ; 

" If I have been extinguished, yet there rise 
A thousand beacons from the spark I bore" — 
u And who are those chained to the car V* — «« The 
wise, 

" The great, the unforgotten, — they who wore 
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, 
Signs of thought's empire over thought — their lore 

" Taught them not this, to know themselves ; their 
Could not repress the mystery within, [might 

And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night 

" Caught them ere evening." — " Who is he with chin 
Upon his breast, and hands crost on his chain?" — 
" The Child of a fierce hour ; he sought to win 

" The world, and lost all that it did contain 
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed ; and more 
Of fame and peace than virtue's self can gain 

" Without the opportunity which bore 

Him on its eagle pinions to the peak 

From which a thousand climbers have before 

" Fallen, as Napoleon fell." — I felt my cheek 

Alter to see the shadow pass away, 

Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak, 

That every pigmy kicked it as it lay ; 

And much 1 grieved to think how power and will 

In opposition rule our mortal day, 

And why God made irreconcilable 

Good and the means of good ; and for despair 

I half disdained mine eyes' desire to fill 



With the spent vision of the times that were; 
And scarce have ceased to be. — " Dost thou behold," 
Said my guide, " those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire, 

" Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold, 
And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage — 
names which the world thinks always old, 

" For in the battle life and they did wage, 
She remained conqueror. I was overcome 
By my own heart alone, which neither age, 

" Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb 
Could temper to its object." — " Let them pass," 
I cried, " the world and its mysterious doom 

* Is not so much more glorious than it was, 
That I desire to worship those who drew 
New figures on its false and fragile glass 

" As the old faded." — " Figures ever new 
Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may ; 
We have but thrown, as those before us threw, 

" Our shadows on it as it past away. 

But mark how chained to the triumphal chair 

The mighty phantoms of an elder day ; 

" All that is mortal of great Plato there 
Expiates the joy and woe his master Knew not : 
The star that ruled his doom was far too fair, 

" And life, where long that flower of Heaven 

grew not, 
Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain, 
Or age, or sloth, or slavery, could subdue not. 

" And near him walk the [ ] twain, 

The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion 
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain. 

" The world was darkened beneath either pinion 
Of him whom from the flock of conquerors 
Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion ; 

" The other long outlived both woes and wars, 
Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept 
The jealous key of truth's eternal doors, 

" If Bacon's eagle spirit had not leapt 

Like lightning out of darkness — he compelled 

The Proteus shape of Nature as it slept 

" To wake, and lead him to the caves that held 

The treasure of the secrets of its reign. 

See the great bards of elder time, who quelled 

" The nassions which they sung, as by their strain 
May well be known : their living melody 
Tempers its own contagion to the vein 

" Of those who are infected with it — I 
Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain, 
And so my words have seeds of misery !" 



31 fi 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. 



[Tnerc is a ofcaaoo here in the Ms. which it is tmpoeaible 

10 till up. It appears bOB Mm context, that other sh.ipor- 
pass, and that Rousseau still stood beside the dre;uner, as] 

he pointed to ■ company, 

'Midst whom I quickly recognised the heirs 
Of fleMiii'n crime, from him to Constantino; 
Theanarch chicfs.whose force and murderous snares 

Had founded many a sceptre-bearing lino, 

And spread the plague of gold and blood abroad : 

And Gregory and John, and men divine, 

Who rose like shadows between man and God ; 

Till that eclipse, still hanging over heaven, 

"Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode, 

For the true sun it quenched — " Their power w^is 
But to destroy," replied the leader : — " I [given 
Am one of those who have created, even 

If it be but a world of agony." — 

" Whence comest thou ? and whither goest thou ? 

How did thy course begin f I said, " and why I 

" Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow 

Of people, and my heart sick of one sad thought — 

Speak !" — " Whence I am, I partly seem to know, 

" And how and by what paths I have been brought 
To this dread pass, methinks even thou may'st 

guess ; — 
Why this should be, my mind can compass not ; 

" Whither the conqueror hurries me, still less ; — 
But follow thou, and from spectator turn 
Actor or victim in this wretchedness, 

" And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn 
From thee. Now listen : — In the April prime, 
When all the forest tips began to burn 

" With kindling green, touched by the azure clime 
Of the young year's dawn, I was laid asleep 
Under a mountain, which from unknown time 

" Had yawned into a cavern, high and deep ; 

And from it came a gentle rivulet, 

Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep 

* Bent the soft grass, and kept for ever wet 

The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the 

grove 
With sounds, which whoso hears must needs forget 

" All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love, 
Which they had known before that hour of rest ; 
A sleeping mother then would dream not of 

" Her only child who died upon her breast 
At eventide — a king would mourn no more 
The crown of which his brows were dispossest 

" When the sun lingered o'er his ocean floor, 

To gild his rival's new prosperity. 

Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore 

" Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee, 
The thought of which no other sleep will quell, 
Nor other music blot from memorv, 



" So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell ; 
And whether life bad been before that sleep 
The heaven which I imagine, or a hell 

" Like this harsh world in which I wake to 

wee]), 
I know not. I arose, and for a space 
The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep, 

" Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace 
Of light diviner than the common sun 
Sheds on the common earth, and all the place 

" Was filled with magic sounds woven into one 

Oblivious melody, confusing sense 

Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun ; 

" And, as I looked, the bright omnipresence 
Of morning through the orient cavern flowed, 
And the sun's image radiantly intense 

" Burned on the waters of the well that glowed 
Like gold, and threaded all the forest's maze 
With winding paths of emerald fire ; there stood 

" Amid the sun, — as he amid the blaze 

Of his own glory, on the vibrating 

Floor oi the fountain — paved with flashing rays. 

" A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling 
Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn, 
And the invisible rain did ever sing 

" A silver music on the mossy lawn ; 
And still before me on the dusky grass, 
Iris her many-coloured scarf had drawn : 

" In her right hand she bore a crystal glass, 
Mantling with bright Nepenthe ; the fierce splen- 
dour 
Fell from her as she moved under the mass 

" Out of the deep cavern, with palms so tender, 
Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow ; 
She glided along the river, and did bend her 

" Head under the dark boughs, till, like a willow, 
Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream 
That whispered with delight to be its pillow. 

" As one enamoured is upborne in dream 

O'er lily-paven lakes 'mid silver mist, 

To wondrous music, so this shape might seem 

" Partly to tread the waves with feet which kissed 
The dancing foam ; partly to glide along 
The air which roughened the moist amethyst, 

" Or the faint morning beams that fell among 
The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees ; 
And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song 

" Of leaves, and winds, and waves, and birds, and 

bees, 
And falling drops moved to a measure new, 
Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze, 

" Up from the lake a shape of golden dew 
Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon, 
Dances i' the wind, where never eagle flew ; 



TIIE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



317 



" And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune 
To w hich they moved, Beemed as they moved to blot 
The thoughts of him who gazed on them ; and soon 

" All that was, seemed as if it had been not ; 
And all the gazer's mind was strewn beneath 
Her feet like embers ; and she, thought by thought, 

" Trampled its sparks into the dust of death, 

As day upon the threshold of the east 

Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath 

" Of darkness re-illumine even the least 
Of heaven's living eyes ! like day she came, 
Making the night a dream ; and ere she ceased 

" To move, as one between desire and shame 
Suspended, I said — If, as it doth seem, 
Thou comest from the realm without a name, 

" Into this valley of perpetual dream, 

Show whence I came, and where I am, and why — 

Pass not away upon the passing stream. 

" Arise and quench thy thirst, was her reply. 
And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand 
Of dewy morning's vital alchemy, 

" I rose ; and, bending at her sweet command, 
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised, 
And suddenly my brain became as sand, 

" Where the first wave had more than half erased 
The track of deer on desert Labrador ; 
Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed, 

" Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore, 
Until the second bursts ; — so on my sight 
Burst a new vision, never seen before, 

" And the fair shape waned in the coming light, 
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops 
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite 

" Of sun-rise, ere it tinge the mountain tops ; 
And as the presence of that fairest planet, 
Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes 

u That his day's path may end, as he began it, 
In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent 
Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it, 

a Or the soft note in which his dear lament 
The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress 
That turned his weary slumber to content ;* 

" So knew I in that light's severe excess 

The presence of that shape which on the stream 

Moved, as I moved along the wilderness, 

" More dimly than a day-appearing dream, 

The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep ; 

A light of heaven, whose half-extinguished beam 

" Through the sick day in which we wake to weep, 
Glimmers, for ever sought, for ever lost ; 
So did that shape its obscure tenour keep 

* The favourite song, " Stanco di pascolar le pecorelle," 
is a Brescian national air. 



" Beside my path, as silent as a ghost; 
Bat the new Vision, and the cold bright car, 
With solemn speed and stunning music, crost 

" The forest, and as if from some dread war 
Triumphantly returning, the loud million 
Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star. 

" A moving arch of victory, the vermilion 
And green and azure plumes of Iris had 
Built high over her wind-winged pavilion, 

" And underneath ethereal glory clad 
The wilderness, and far before her flew 
The tempest of the splendour, which forbade 

" Shadow to fall from leaf and stone ; the crew 
Seemed in that light, like atomies to dance 
Within a sunbeam ; — some upon the new 

" Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance 
The grassy vesture of the desert, played, 
Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance ; 

" Others stood gazing, till within the shade 
Of the great mountain its light left them dim ; 
Others outspeeded it ; and others made 

" Circles around it, like the clouds that swim 
Round the high moon in a bright sea of air ; 
And more did follow, with exulting hymn, 

" The chariot and the captives fettered there : — 
But all like bubbles on an eddying flood 
Fell into the same track at last, and were 

" Borne onward. I among the multitude 

Was swept — me, sweetest flowers delayed not long ; 

Me, not the shadow nor the solitude ; 

" Me, not that falling stream's Lethean song ; 
Me, not the phantom of that early form, 
Which moved upon its motion — but among 

" The thickest billows of that living storm 
I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime 
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform. 

" Before the chariot had begun to climb 
The opposing steep of that mysterious dell, 
Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme 

" Of him who from the lowest depths of hell, 
Through every paradise and through all glory, 
Love led serene, and who returned to tell 

" The words of hate and care ; the wondrous story 
How all things are transfigured except Love ; 
(For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary, 

u The world can hear not the sweet notes that move 
The sphere whose light is melody to lovers) 
A wonder worthy of his rhyme — the grove 

" Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers, 
The earth was grey with phantoms, and the air 
Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers 

" A flock of vampire-bats before the glare 
Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening, 
Strange night upon some Indian vale ; — thus were 



;>ik 



POKMS WRITTEN IX 1822. 



'• Phantoms diffused around ; and some did fling 
Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves, 
Behind thorn ; some like eaglets on the wing 

" Were lost in the white day ; others like elves 
Danced in a thousand onimagined shapes 
Upon the sunny streams and grassy shelves ; 

" And others sate chattering like restless apes 
On vulgar hands, * * * 

Some made a cradle of the ermined capes 

" Of kingly mantles ; some across the tire 
Of pontiffs rode, like demons ; others played 
Under the crown which girt with empire 

K A baby's or an idiot's brow, and made 

Their nests in it. The old anatomies 

Sate hatching their bare broods under the shade 

u Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes 

To re-assume the delegated power, 

Arrayed in which those worms did monarchise, 

* Who made this earth their charnel. Others more 

Humble, like falcons, sat upon the fist 

Of common men, and round then* heads did soar ; 

" Or like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist 
On evening marshes, thronged about the brow 
Of lawyers, statesmen, priest, and theorist ; — 

" And others, like discoloured flakes of snow 
On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair, 
Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow 

" Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were 
A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained 
fn drops of sorrow. I became aware 



"Of whence those forms proceeded which thusstain'd 
The track in which we moved. After brief space, 
From every form the beauty slowly waned ; 

" From every firmest limb and fairest face 

The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left 

The action and the shape without the grace 

" Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft 
With care ; and in those eyes where once hope shone, 
Desire, like a lioness bereft 

" Of her last cub, glared ere it died ; each one 

Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly 

These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown 

" In autumn evening from a poplar tree, 
Each like himself and like each other were 
At first ; but some distorted seemed to be 

" Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air ; 
And of this stuff the car's creative ray 
Wrapt all the busy phantoms that were there, 

" As the sun shapes the clouds ; thus on the way 
Mask after mask fell from the countenance 
And form of all ; and long before the day 

" Was old, the joy which waked like heaven's glance 
The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died ; 
And some grew weary of the ghastly dance, 

" And fell, as I have fallen, by the way -side ; — 
Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past 
And least of strength and beauty did abide. 

" Then, what is life? I cried."— 



! 



FRAGMENTS. 



31 a 



FRAGMENTS. 



TO 

Here, my dear friend, is a new book for you ; 

1 have already dedicated two 

To other friends, one female and one male, 

What you are, is a thing that I must veil ; 

What can this be to those who praise or rail ? 

I never was attached to that great sect 

Whose doctrine is that each one should select 

Out of the world a mistress or a friend, 

And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend 

To cold oblivion — though it is the code 

Of modern morals, and the beaten road 

Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread 

Who travel to their home among the dead, 

By the broad highway of the world — and so 

With one sad friend, and many a jealous foe, 

The dreariest and the longest journey go. 

Free love has this, different from gold and clay, 
That to divide is not to take away. 
Like ocean, which the general north wind breaks 
Into ten thousand waves, and each one makes 
A mirror of the moon ; like some great glass, 
Which did distort whatever form might pass, 
Dashed into fragments by a playful child, 
Which then reflects its eyes and forehead mild, 
Giving for one, which it could ne'er express, 
A thousand images of loveliness. 

If I were one whom the loud world held wise, 
I should disdain to quote authorities 
In the support of this kind of love ; — 
Why there is first the God in heaven above 

* These fragments do not properly belong to the poems 
of 1822. They are gleanings from Shelley's manuscript 
books and papers; preserved not only because they are 
beautiful in themselves, but as affording indications of his 
feelirgs and virtues. 



Who wrote a book called Nature, 'tis to be 
Reviewed I hear in the next Quarterly ; 
And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece ; 
And Jesus Christ himself did never cease 
To urge all living things to love each other, 
And to forgive their mutual faults, and smother 
The Devil of disunion in their souls. 



It is a sweet thing friendship, a dear balm, 
A happy and auspicious bird of calm, 
Which rides o'er life's ever tumultuous Ocean ; 
A God that broods o'er chaos in commotion ; 
A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are, 
Lifts its bold head into the world's pure air, 
And blooms most radiantly when others die, 
Health, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity ; 
And, with the light and odour of its bloom, 
Shining within the dungeon and the tomb ; 
Whose coming is as light and music are 
'Mid dissonance and gloom — a star 
Which moves not 'mid the moving heavens alone, 
A smile among dark frowns — a gentle tone 
Among rude voices, a beloved light, 
A solitude, a refuge, a delight. 

If I had but a friend ! why I have three, 

Even by my own confession ; there may be 

Some more, for what I know ; for 'tis my mind 

To call my friends all who are wise and kind, 

And these, Heaven knows, at best are very few, 

But none can ever be more dear than you. 

Why should they be ? my muse has lost her wings, 

Or like a dying swan who soars and sings 

I should describe you in heroic style, 

But as it is — are you not void of guile ? 

A lovely soul, formed to be blessed and bless ; 

A well of sealed and secret happiness ; 

A lute, which those whom love has taught to play 

Make music on, to cheer the roughest day ? 






FRAGMENTS. 



u. 
A gentle story of two lovers young, 

Who mot in innocence and died in sorrow. 
Ami of ono sollish heart, whoso ranoour dung 

Like curses on them ; are ye slow to borrow 

The lore of truth from such a tale I 
Or in this world's deserted vale. 

Do ye nor soe a star of gladness 
Pierce the shadows of its sadness. 
When ye are cold, that love is a light sent 
From hea von, which none shall quench, to cheer the 
innocent ? 

HI. 

I am drunk with the honey wine 
Of the moon-unfolded eglantine, 
Which fairies catch in hyacinth buds : — 
The bats, the dormice, and the moles 
Sleep in the walls or under the sward 
Of the desolate Castle yard ; 
And when 'tis spilt on the summer earth 
Or its fumes arise among the dew, 
Their jocund dreams are full of mirth, 
They gibber their joy in sleep ; for few 
Of the fairies bear those bowls so new ! 



IV. 

And who feels discord now or sorrow ? 

Love is the universe to-day — 
These are the slaves of dim to-morrow, 

Darkening Life's labyrinthine way. 



TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 

Thy little footsteps on the sands 
Of a remote and lonely shore ; 
The twinkling of thine infant hands 

Where now the worm will feed no more : 
Thy mingled look of love and glee 
When we returned to gaze on thee. 

VI. 

The world is dreary, 
And I am weary 
Of wandering on without thee, Mary ; 
A joy was ere while 
In thy voice and thy smile, 
And 'tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary. 
July, 1819. 

VII. 

My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, 
And left me in this dreary world alone ! 

Thy form is here indeed — a lovely one 

But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road, 
That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode ; 
Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair, 

Where 
For thine own sake I cannot follow thee. 



July, 1819. 



VIII. 



And where is truth ? On tombs ? for such to thee 
Has been my heart — and thy dead memory 
Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year — 
Unchangingly preserved and buried there. 



IX. 

When a lover clasps his fairest, 
Then be our dread sport the rarest. 
Their caresses were like the chaff 
In the tempest, and be our laugh 
His despair— her epitaph ! 

When a mother clasps her child, 
Watch till dusty Death has piled 
His cold ashes on the clay ; 
She has loved it many a day — 
She remains, — it fades away. 

X. 

One sung of thee who left the tale untold, 

Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting : 

Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold, 
Which mock the lips with air, when they are 
thirsting. 

XI. 

Ye gentle visitations of calm thought — 
Moods like the memories of happier earth, 
Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth, 

Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrougnt, 
But that the clouds depart and stars remain, 
While they remain, and ye, alas, depart ! 

XII. 
In the cave which wild weeds cover 
Wait for thine ethereal lover ; 
For the pallid moon is waning, 
O'er the spiral cypress hanging 
And the moon no cloud is staining. 

It was once a Roman's chamber, 
Where he kept his darkest revels, 
And the wild weeds twine and clamber ; 
It was then a chasm for devils. 

XIII. 

Rome has fallen, ye see it lying 

Heaped in undistinguished ruin : 
Nature is alone undying. 

XIV. 

How sweet it is to sit and read the tales 
Of mighty poets, and to hear the while 
Sweet music, which when the attention fails 
Fills the dim pause 

XV. 

Wake the serpent not — lest he 
Should not know the way to go, — 
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping 
Through the deep grass of the meadow ! 
Not a bee shall hear him creeping, 
Not a may-fly shall awaken, 
From its cradling blue-bell shaken, 
Not the starlight as he's sliding 
Through the grass with silent gliding. 



The fitful alternations of the rain, 
When the chill wind, languid as with pain 
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there 
Drives through the grey and beamless atmospnere. 






FRAGMENTS. 



321 



XVII. 

There is a warm and gentle atmosphere 
About the form of one we love, and thus 
As in a tender mist our spirits are 

Wrapt in the of that which is to us 

The health of life's own life. 



XVIII. 

What men gain fairly — that they should possess, 

And children may inherit idleness, 

From him who earns it — This is understood ; 

Private injustice may be general good. 

But he who gains by base and armed wrong, 

Or guilty fraud, or base compliances, 

May be despoiled ; even as a stolen dress 

Is stript from a convicted thief, and he 

Left in the nakedness of infamy. 

XIX. 

I would not be a king — enough 

Of woe it is to love ; 
The path to power is steep and rough, 

And tempests reign above. 

I would not climb the imperial throne ; 
'Tis built on ice which fortune's sun 

Thaws in the height of noon. 
Then farewell, king, yet were I one, 
Care would not come so soon. 
Would he and I were far away 
Keeping flocks on Himelay ! 

XX. 

thou immortal deity 

Whose throne is in the depth of human thought, 

1 do adjure thy power and thee 

By all that man may be, by all that he is not, 
By all that he has been and yet must be ! 

XXI. 

ON KEATS, 

WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE JNSCIUBED — 

" Here lieth One whose name was writ on water !" 
But ere the breath that could erase it blew, 
Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter, 
Death, the immortalising winter flew, 
Athwart the stream, and time's monthless torrent 
A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name [grew 

Of Adonais ! — 



He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, 
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind ; 

Through desert woods and tracts, which seem 
Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined. 

XXIII. 

The rude wind is singing 
The dirge of the music dead, 

The cold worms are clinging 
Where kisses were lately fed. 

XXIV. 

What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest 

The wreath to mighty poets only due, 
Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest ? 

Touch not those leaves which for the eternal few, 
Who wander o'er the paradise of fame, 

In sacred dedication ever grew, — 
One of the crowd thou art without a name. 
Ah, friend, 'tis the false laurel that I wear ; 

Bright though it seem, it is not the same 
As that which bound Milton's immortal hair ; 

Its dew is poison and the hopes that quicken 
Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair, 

Are flowers which die almost before they sicken. 

XXV. 

When soft winds and sunny skies 
With the green earth harmonize, 
And the young and dewy dawn, 
Bold as an unhunted fawn, 
Up the windless heaven is gone — 
Laugh — for ambushed in the day, 
Clouds and whirl winds watch their prey. 

XXVI. 

The babe is at peace within the womb, 
The corpse is at rest within the tomb, 
We begin in what we end. 

XXVII. 
EPITAPH. 

These are two friends whose lives were undivided ; 
So let their memory be, now they have glided 
Under their grave ; let not their bones be parted, 
For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.. 



322 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822. 



NOTE ON THE POEMS OF 1822. 

BY THE EDITOR. 



This morn thy gallant bark 
Sailed on a sunny sea, 

'Tis noon, and tempests dark 
llave wrecked it on the lee. 
Ah woe • ah woe ! 

By spirits of the deep 

Thou'rt cradled on the billow, 

To thy eternal sleep. 

Thou sleep'st upon the shore 
Beside the knelling surge, 

And sea-nymphs evermore 
Shall sadly chant thy dirge. 
They come ! they come, 



The spirits of the deep, 

While near thy sea-weed pillow 

My lonely watch I keep. 

From far across the sea 

I hear a loud lament, 
By echo's voice for thee, 

From ocean's caverns sent. 
O list ! O list, 
The spirits of the deep ; 
They raise a wail of sorrow, 
While I for ever weep. 



With this last year of the life of Shelley these 
Notes end. They are not what I intended them 
to be. I began with energy and a burning desire 
to impart to the world, in worthy language, the 
sense I have of the virtues and genius of the 
Beloved and the Lost ; my strength has failed 
under the task. Recurrence to the past — full of 
its own deep and unforgotten joys and sorrows, 
contrasted with succeeding years of painful and 
solitary struggle, has shaken my health. Days 
of great suffering have followed my attempts to 
write, and these again produced a weakness and 
languor that spread their sinister influence over 
these notes. I dislike speaking of myself, but 
cannot help apologising to the dead, and to the 
public, for not having executed in the manner I 
desired the history I engaged to give of Shelley's 
writings *. 

* I at one time feared that the correction of the press 
might be less exact through my illness ; but, I believe 
that it is nearly free from error. No omissions have been 
made in this edition ; (in the last of 1839 they were con- 
fined to certain passages of •' Queen Mab";) some asterisks 
occur in a few pages, as they did in the volume of Post- 
humous Poems, either because they refer to private con- 
cerns, or because the original manuscript was left imper- 
fect. Did any one see the papers from which I drew that 
volume, the wonder would be how any eyes or patience 
were capable of extracting it from so confused a mass, 



The winter of 1822 was passed in Pisa, if we 
might call that season winter in which autumn 
merged into spring, after the interval of but few 
days of bleaker weather. Spring sprang up early, 
and with extreme beauty. Shelley had conceived 
the idea of writing a tragedy on the subject of 
Charles I. It was one that he believed adapted 
for a drama ; full of intense interest, contrasted 
character, and busy passion. He had recom- 
mended it long before, when he encouraged me 
to attempt a play. Whether the subject proved 
more difficult than he anticipated, or whether in 
fact he could not bend his mind away from the 
broodings and wanderings of thought, divested 
from human interest, which he best loved, I 
cannot tell ; but he proceeded slowly, and threw 
it aside for one of the most mystical of his poems, 
" The Triumph of Life," on which he was employed 
at the last. 

His passion for boating was fostered at this 
time by having among our friends several sailors ; 
his favourite companion, Edward Ellerker Wil- 
liams, of the 8th Light Dragoons, had begun his life 

interlined and broken into fragments, so that the sense 
could only be deciphered and joined by guesses, which 
might seem rather intuitive than founded on reasoning 
Yet I believe no mistake was made. 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF 1822. 



323 



in the navy, and had afterwards entered the army ; 
he had spent several years in India, and his love 
for adventure and manly exercises accorded with 
Shelley's taste. It was their favourite plan to 
build a boat such as they could manage themselves, 
and, living on the sea-coast, to enjoy at every 
hour and season the pleasure they loved best. 
Captain Roberts, R.N., undertook to build the 
boat at Genoa, where he was also occupied in 
building the Bolivar for Lord Byron. Ours was 
to be an open boat, on a model taken from one of 
the royal dock-yards. I have since heard that there 
was a defect in this model, and that it was never 
sea-worthy. In the month of February, Shelley 
and his friend went to Spezia to seek for houses 
for us. Only one was to be found at all suitable ; 
however, a trifle such as not finding a house 
could nut stop Shelley ; the one found was to 
serve for all. It was unfurnished ; we sent our 
furniture by sea, and with a good deal of precipi- 
tation, arising from his impatience, made our 
removal. We left Pisa on the 26th of April. 

The bay of Spezia is of considerable extent, and 
divided by a rocky promontory into a larger and 
smaller one. The town of Lerici is situated on 
the eastern point, and in the depth of the smaller 
bay, which bears the name of this town, is the 
village of Sant' Arenzo. Our house, Casa Magni, 
was close to this village ; the sea came up to the 
door, a steep hill sheltered it behind. The pro- 
prietor of the estate on which it was situated was 
insane ; he had begun to erect a large house at 
the summit of the hill behind, but his malady 
prevented its being finished, and it was falling 
into ruin. He had, and this to the Italians had 
seemed a glaring symptom of very decided mad- 
ness, rooted up the olives on the hill side, and 
planted forest trees ; these were mostly young, 
but the plantation was more in English taste than 
I ever elsewhere saw in Italy ; some fine walnut 
and ilex trees intermingled their dark massy 
foliage, and formed groups which still haunt my 
memory, as then they satiated the eye, with a 
sense of loveliness. The scene was indeed of 
unimaginable beauty : the blue extent of waters, 
the almost land-locked bay, the near castle of 
Lerici, shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto 
Venere to the west ; the varied forms of the pre- 
cipitous rocks that bound in the beach, over which 
there was only a winding rugged foot-path towards 
Lerici, and none on the other side ; the tideless 
sea leaving no sands nor shingle, — formed a 
picture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa's land- 
scapes only: sometimes the sunshine vanished 
when the scirocco raged — the ponente, the wind 



was called on that shore. The gales and squalls, 
that hailed our first arrival, surrounded the bay 
with foam ; the howling wind swept round our 
exposed house, and the sea roared unremittingly, 
so that we almost fancied ourselves on board ship. 
At other times sunshine and calm invested sea 
and sky, and the rich tints of Italian heaven 
bathed the scene in bright and ever-varying tints. 

The natives were wilder than the place. Our 
near neighbours, of Sant' Arenzo, were more like 
savages than any people I ever before lived among. 
Many a night they passed on the beach, singing or 
rather howling, the women dancing about among 
the waves that broke at their feet, the men leaning 
against the rocks and joining in their loud wild 
chorus. We could get no provisions nearer than 
Sarzana, at a distance of three miles and a half 
off, with the torrent of the Magra between ; and 
even there the supply was very deficient. Had 
we been wrecked on an island of the South Seas, 
we could scarcely have felt ourselves further from 
civilisation and comfort ; but whex*e the sun shines 
the latter becomes an unnecessary luxury, and we 
had enough society among ourselves. Yet I con- 
fess housekeeping became rather a toilsome task, 
especially as I was suffering in my health, and 
could not exert myself actively. 

At first the fatal boat had not arrived, and was 
expected with great impatience. On Monday, 
May 12th, it came. Williams records the long- 
wished-for fact in his journal : " Cloudy and threat- 
ening weather. M. Maglian called, and after 
dinner and while walking with him on the terrace, 
we discovered a strange sail coming round the 
point of Porto Venere, which proved at length to 
be Shelley's boat. She had left Genoa on Thurs- 
day last, but had been driven back by the prevail- 
ing bad winds. A Mr. Heslop and two English 
seamen brought her round, and they speak most 
highly of her performances. She does indeed 
excite my surprise and admiration. Shelley and 
I walked to Lerici, and made a stretch off the 
land to try her ; and I find she fetches whatever 
she looks at. In short, we have now a perfect 
plaything for the summer." — It was thus that short- 
sighted mortals welcomed death, he having dis- 
guised his grim form in a pleasing mask ! The time of 
the friends was now spent on the sea ; the weather 
became fine, and our whole party often passed the 
evenings on the water, when the wind promised 
pleasant sailing. Shelley and Williams made 
longer excursions ; they sailed several times to 
Massa ; they had engaged one of the seamen who 
brought her round, a boy, by name Charles Vivian; 
and they had not the slightest apprehension of 



&u 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEM8 OF 18-2-2. 



j hp. When the weather was unfavourable, 
they employed themselves with alterations in the 

Bg, and by building a boat of canvas and 
reeds, as light as possible, to lia\ e on board the 

other, for the convenience of landing in waters 

too shallow for the larger vessel. When Shelley 

was on board, he had his papers with him ; and 
much of the u Triumph of Life " was written as 
he Bailed or weltered on that sea which was sooii 
to engulf him. 

The heats set in, in the middle of June ; the 
days became excessively hot, but the sea breeze 
cooled the air at noon, and extreme heat always 
put Shelley in spirits : a long drought had pre- 
ceded the heat, and prayers for rain were being 
put up in the churches, and processions of relics 
for the same effect took place in every town. At 
this time we received letters announcing the 
arrival of Leigh Hunt at Pisa. Shelley was very 
eager to see him. I was confined to my room 
by severe illness, and could not move ; it was 
agreed that Shelley and Williams should go to 
Leghorn in the boat. Strange that no fear of 
danger crossed our minds ! Living on the sea- 
shore, the ocean became as a plaything : as a 
child may sport with a lighted stick, till a spark 
inflames a forest and spreads destruction over all, 
so did we fearlessly and blindly tamper with 
danger, and make a game of the terrors of the 
ocean. Our Italian neighbours even trusted 
themselves as far as Massa in the skiff ; and the 
running down the line of coast to Leghorn, gave 
no more notion of peril than a fair-weather inland 
navigation would have done to those who had 
never seen the sea. Once, some months before, 
Trelawny had raised a warning voice as to the 
difference of our calm bay, and the open sea 
beyond ; but Shelley and his friend, with their 
one sailor boy, thought themselves a match for 
the storms of the Mediterranean, in a boat which 
they looked upon as equal to all it was put 
to do. 

On the 1st of July they left us. If ever shadow 
of future ill darkened the present hour, such was 
over my mind when they went. During the 
whole of our stay at Lerici, an intense presenti- 
ment of coming evil brooded over my mind, 
and covered this beautiful place, and genial 
summer, with the shadow of coming misery — I had 
vainly struggled with these emotions — they seemed 
accounted for by my illness, but at this hour of 
separation they recurred with renewed violence. 
1 did not anticipate danger for them, but a vague 
expectation of evil shook me to agony, and I could 
scarcely bring myself tc let them go. The day 



was calm and clear, and a fine breeze rising at 
twelve they weighed for Leghorn ; they made the 
run of about fifty miles in sevon hours and a half: 
the Bolivar was in port, and the regulations of 
the health-office not permitting them to go on 
shore after sunset, they borrowed cushions from 
the larger vessel, and slept on board their 
boat. 

They spent a week at Pisa and Leghorn. The 
want of rain was severely felt in the country. The 
weather continued sultry and fine. I have heard 
that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits. 
Not long before, talking of presentiment, he had 
said the only one that he ever found infallible, 
was the certain advent of some evil fortune 
when he felt peculiarly joyous. Yet if ever fate 
whispered of coming disaster, such inaudible, but 
not unfelt, prognostics hovered around us. The 
beauty of the place seemed unearthly in its excess: 
the distance we were at from all signs of civilisa- 
tion, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its roaring 
for ever in our ears, — all these things led the mind 
to brood over strange thoughts, and, lifting it 
from every-day life, caused it to be familiar with 
the unreal. A sort of spell surrounded us, and 
each day, as the voyagers did not return, we grew 
restless and disquieted, and yet, strange to say, 
we were not fearful of the most apparent 
danger. 

The spell snapped, it was all over ; an interval 
of agonising doubt — of days passed in miserable 
journeys to gain tidings, of hopes that took firmer 
root, even as they were more baseless — were 
changed to the certainty of the death that eclipsed 
all happiness for the survivors for evermore. 

There was something in our fate peculiarly 
harrowing. The remains of those we lost were 
cast on shore ; but by the quarantine laws of the 
coast, we were not permitted to have possession 
of them — the law r s, with respect to everything 
cast on land by the sea, being, that such should 
be burned, to prevent the possibility of any remnant 
bringing the plague into Italy; and no representa- 
tion could alter the law. At length, through the 
kind and unwearied exertions of Mr. Dawkins, 
our Charge d' Affaires at Florence, we gained 
permission to receive the ashes after the bodies 
were consumed. Nothing could equal the zeal of 
Trelawny in carrying our wishes into effect. He 
was indefatigable in his exertions, and full of 
forethought and sagacity in his arrangements. 
It was a fearful task : he stood before us at last, 
his hands scorched and blistered by the flames of 
the funeral pyre, and by touching the burnt relic3 



EDITOR'S NOTE ON POEMS OF I8:>± 



326 



as he placed them in the receptacles prepared for 
the purpose. And there, in compass of that small 
case, was gathered all that remained on earth of 
him whose genius and virtue were a crown of 
glory to the world — whose love had been the 
source of happiness, peace, and good, — to be 
buried with him ! 

The concluding stanzas of the Adonais pointed 
out where the remains ought to be deposited ; in 
addition to which our beloved child lay buried in 
the cemetery at Rome. Thither Shelley's ashes 
were conveyed, and they rest beneath one of the 
autique weed-grown towers that recur at intervals 
in the circuit of the massy ancient wall of Rome. 
The vignette of the title page, is taken from a 
sketch made on the spot by Captain Roberts. He 
selected the hallowed place himself ; there is the 

Sepulchre, , 

O, not of him, but of our joy ! 

***** 

And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time 
Feeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand ; 
And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime, 
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath 
A field is spread, on which a newer band 
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, 
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. 

Could sorrow for the lost, and shuddering 
anguish at the vacancy left behind, be soothed 
by poetic imaginations, there was something in 
Shelley's fate to mitigate pangs, which yet alas ! 
could not be so mitigated ; for hard reality brings 
too miserably home to the mourner, all that is lost 
of happiness, all of lonely unsolaced struggle that 
remains. Still though dreams and hues of poetry 
cannot blunt grief, it invests his fate with a sublime 



fitness, which those less nearly allied may regard 
with complacency. A year before, he had poured 
into verse all such ideas about death as givo it a 
glory of its own. He had, as it now seems, almost 
anticipated his own destiny ; and when the mind 
figures his skiff wrapped from sight by the thunder- 
storm, as it was last seen upon the purple sea ; 
and then, as the cloud of the tempest passed away, 
no sign remained of where it had been* — who 
but will regard as a prophecy the last stanza of 
the " Adonais \ " 

The breath, whose might I have invoked in song, 
Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven, 
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng, 
Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ; 
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 

* Captain Roberts watched the vessel with his glass 
from the top of the light-house of Leghorn, on its home- 
ward track. They were off Via Keggio, at some distance 
from shore, when a storm was driven over the sea. It 
enveloped them and several larger vessels in darkness. 
When the cloud passed onward, Roberts looked again, 
and saw every other vessel sailing on the ocean except 
their little schooner, which had vanished. From that 
time he could scarcely doubt the fatal truth; yet we 
fancied that they might have been driven towards Elba, 
or Corsica, and so be saved. The observation made as to 
the spot where the boat disappeared, caused it to be 
found, through the exertions of Trelawny, for that effect. 
It had gone down in ten fathom water ; it had not capsized, 
and, except such things as had floated from her, every- 
thing was found on board exactly as it had been placed 
when they sailed. The boat itself was uninjured. Roberts 
possessed himself of her, and decked her, but she proved 
not sea-worthy, and her shattered planks now lie rotting 
on the shore of one of the Ionian islands, on which she 
was wrecked. 

Putney, May 1st, 1839. 



PREFACE 

TO THE VOLUME OF POSTHUMOUS POEMS, 

PUULISHED IN 1821. 



In nobil sangue, vita umile e queta, 

Ed in alto intelletto un puro core ; 

Frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore, 

E in aspetto pensoso, anima lieta — Petrarca. 



It bad been my wish, on presenting the public with 
the Posthumous Poems of Shelley, to have accom- 
panied them by a biographical notice : as it appeared 
to me, that at this moment a narration of the events of 
my husband's life would come more gracefully from 
other hands than mine, I applied to Leigh Hunt. 
The distinguished friendship that Shelley felt for him, 
and the enthusiastic affection with which Leigh Hunt 
clings to his friend's memory, seemed to point him out 
as the person best calculated for such an undertaking. 
His absence from this country, which prevented our 
mutual explanation, has unfortunately rendered my 
scheme abortive. I do not doubt but that on some 
other occasion he will pay this tribute to his lost 
friend, and sincerely regret that the volume which I 
edit has not been honoured by its insertion. 

The comparative solitude in which Shelley lived, 
was the occasion that he was personally known to few ; 
and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause which he con- 
sidered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement 
of the moral and physical state of mankind, was the 
chief reason why he, like other illustrious reformers, 
was pursued by hatred and calumny. No man was 
ever more devoted than he, to the endeavour of making 
those around him happy ; no man ever possessed friends 
more unfeignedly attached to him. The ungrateful 
world did not feel his loss, and the gap it made seemed 
to close as quickly over his memory as the murderous 
sea above his living frame. Hereafter men will lament 
that his transcendent powers of intellect were extin- 
guished before they had bestowed on them their choicest 
treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable : the 
wise, the brave, the gentle, is gone for ever ! He is to 
them as a bright vision, whose radiant track, left behind 
in the memory, is worth all the realities that society 
can afford. Before the critics contradict me, let them 
appeal to any one who had ever known him : to see 



him was to love him ; and his presence, like Ithuriel'9 
spear, was alone sufficient to disclose the falsehood of 
the tale which his enemies whispered in the ear of the 
ignorant world. 

His life was spent in the contemplation of nature, in 
arduous study, or in acts of kindness and affection. He 
was an elegant scholar and a profound metaphysician : 
without possessing much scientific knowledge, he was 
unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observa- 
tions on natural objects ; he knew every plant by its 
name, and was familiar with the history and habits of 
every production of the earth ; he could interpret 
without a fault each appearance in the sky, and the 
varied phenomena of heaven and earth filled him with 
deep emotion. He made his study and reading-room 
of the shadowed copse, the stream, the lake, and 
the waterfall. Ill health and continual pain preyed 
upon his powers ; and the solitude in which we lived, 
particularly on our first arrival in Italy, although 
cougenial to his feelings, must frequently have 
weighed upon his spirits ; those beautiful and affecting 
" Lines, written in dejection at Naples," were com- 
posed at such an interval ; but when in health, his 
spirits were buoyant and youthful to an extraordinary 
degree. 

Such was his love for nature, that every page of his 
poetry is associated in the minds of his friends with 
the loveliest scenes of the countries which he inhabited. 
In early life he visited the most beautiful parts of this 
country and Ireland. Afterwards the Alps of Switzer- 
land became his inspirers. " Prometheus Unbound " 
was written among the deserted and flower-grown ruins 
of Rome ; and when he made his home under the Pisan 
hills, their roofless recesses harboured him as he com- 
posed " The Witch of Atlas," " Adonais," and 
" Hellas." In the wild but beautiful Bay of Spezia, 
the winds and waves which he loved became his play- 



328 



PREFACE TO POSTHUMOUS POEMS. 



mates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; 
the management of his hoat, its alterations ami improve- 
ments, were his principal occupation. At night, when 
the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often 
went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that 
bordered it, anil sitting beneath their shelter wrote 
" The Triumph of Life,"' the last of his productions. 
The beauty but strangeness of this lonely place, the 
refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of 
a few selected friends, our entire sequestration from the 
rest of the world, all contributed to render this period 
of his life one of continued enjoyment. I am con- 
vinced that the two months we passed there were the 
happiest which he had ever known : his health even 
rapidly improved, and he was never better than when 
1 last saw him, full of spirits and joy, embark for 
Leghorn, that he might there welcome Leigh Hunt 
to Italy. I was to have accompanied him, but illness 
confined me to my room, and thus put the seal on my 
misfortune. His vessel bore out of sight with a 
favourable wind, and I remained awaiting his return 
by the breakers of that sea which was about to engulf 
him. 

He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices 
toward his friends, and enjoying with keen delight the 
renewal of their intercourse. He then embarked with 
"Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his plea- 
sures and of his fate, to return to us. We waited for 
them in vain ; the sea by its restless moaning seemed 
to desire to inform us of what we would not learn : 

but a veil may well be drawn over such misery. 

The real anguish of those moments transcended all 
the fictions that the most glowing imagination ever 
portrayed : our seclusion, the savage nature of the 
inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and our imme- 
diate vicinity to the troubled sea, combined to imbue 
with strange horror our days of uncertainty. The 
truth was at last known, — a truth that made our 
loved and lovely Italy appear a tomb, its sky a pall. 
Every heart echoed the deep lament, and my only 
consolation was in the praise and earnest love that 
jach voice bestowed and each countenance demon- 



strated for him we had lost, — not, I fondly hope, for 
ever : his unearthly and elevated nature is a pledge of 
the continuation of his being, although in an altered 
form. Rome received his ashes ; they are deposited 
beneath its weed-grown wall, and " the world's sole 
monument " is enriched by his remains. 

I must add a few words concerning the contents of 
this volume. "Julian and Maddalo," "The Witch 
of Atlas," and most of the Translations, were written 
some years ago; and, with the exception of "The 
Cyclops," and the Scenes from the " Magico Pro- 
digioso," may he considered as having received the 
author's ultimate corrections. " The Triumph of 
Life " was his last work, and was left in so unfinished a 
state, that I arranged it in its present form with great 
difficulty. All his poems which were scattered in 
periodical works are collected in this volume, and I 
have added a reprint of " Alastor, or the Spirit of 
Solitude : " — the difficulty with which a copy can be 
obtained is the cause of its republication. Many of 
the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the 
occasion, and never retouched, I found among his 
manuscript books, and have carefully copied. I have 
subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their 
composition. 

I do not know whether the critics will reprehend 
the insertion of some of the most imperfect among 
them ; but I frankly own that I have been more 
actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius 
should escape me, than the wish of presenting nothing 
but what was complete to the fastidious reader. I feel 
secure that the Lovers of Shelley's Poetry (who 
know how more than any poet of the present day 
every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar 
beauty) will pardon and thank me : I consecrate this 
volume to them. 

The size of this collection has prevented the insertion 
of any prose pieces. They will hereafter appear in a 
separate publication. 



Mary W. Shelley. 



London, June 1st, 1824. 



TRANSLATIONS 



HYMNS OF HOMER 



HYMN TO MERCURY. 



Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove, 

The Herald-child, king of Arcadia 
And all its pastoral hills, whom in sweet love 

Having been interwoven, modest May 
Bore Heaven's dread Supreme — an antique grove 

Shadowed the cavern where the lovers lay 
In the deep night, unseen by Gods or Men, 
And white-armed Juno slumbered sweetly then. 



Now, when the joy of Jove had its fulfilling, 
And Heaven's tenth moon chronicled her relief, 

She gave to light a babe all babes excelling, 
A schemer subtle beyond all belief ; 

A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing, 
A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief, 

Who 'mongst the Gods was soon about to thieve, 

And other glorious actions to achieve. 



" A useful god-send are you to me now, 
King of the dance, companion of the feast, 

Lovely in all your nature ! Welcome, you [beast, 
Excellent plaything ! Where, sweet mountain 

Got you that speckled shell ? Thus much I know, 
You must come home with me and be my guest; 

You will give joy to me, and I will do 

All that is in my power to honour you. 



" Better to be at home than out of door ; 

So come with me, and though it has been said 
That you alive defend from magic power, 

I know you will sing sweetly when you're dead." 
Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore, 

Lifting it from the grass on which it fed, 
And grasping it in his delighted hold, 
His treasured prize into the cavern old. 



The babe was born at the first peep of day ; 

He began playing on the lyre at noon, 
And the same evening did he steal away 

Apollo's herds ; — the fourth day of the moon 
On which him bore the venerable May, 

From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon, 
Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep, 
But out to seek Apollo's herds would creep. 



Out of the lofty cavern wandering 

He found a tortoise, and cried out — u A treasure !" 
(For Mercury first made the tortoise sing) 

The beast before the portal at his leisure 
The flowery herbage was depasturing, 

Moving his feet in a deliberate measure 
Over the turf. Jove's profitable son 
Eyeing him laughed, and laughing thus begun : — 



Then scooping with a chisel of grey steel, 
He bored the fife and soul out of the beast — 

Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal 
Darts through the tumult of a human breast 

Which thronging cares annoy — not swifter wheel 
The flashes of its torture and unrest 

Out of the dizzy eyes — than Maia's son 

All that he did devise hath featly done. 



And through the tortoise's hard strong skin 

At proper distances small holes he made, 

And fastened the cut stems of reeds within, 

And with a piece of leather overlaid 
The open space and fixed the cubits in, 
Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o'er a I 
Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical. 



XV2 



TRANSLATIONS. 



When he had wrought the lovely instrument, 
He tried the ohords, and made division meet 

Preluding with the plectrum, ami there went 
Up from beneath his hand a tumult Bweet 

Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent 
A strain oi' unpremeditated wit 

Joyous and wild and wanton — such you may 

Hear among revellers on a holiday. 



He sung how Jove and May of the bright sandal 
Dallied in love not quite legitimate ; 

Ami his own birth, still scoffing at the scandal, 
And naming his own name, did celebrate ; 

His mother's cave and servant maids he planned all 
In plastic verse, her household stuff and state, 

Perennial pot, trippet, and brazen pan — 

But singing he conceived another plan. 



Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat, 

He in his sacred crib deposited 
The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet 

Rushed with great leaps up to the mountain' 
head, 
Revolving in his mind some subtle feat 
Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might 
Devise in the lone season of dun night. 



Lo ! the great Sun under the ocean's bed has 
Driven steeds and chariot — the child meanwhile 
strode 

O'er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows, 
Where the immortal oxen of the God 

Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows, 
And safely stalled in a remote abode — 

The archer Argicide, elate and proud, 

Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud. 



He drove them wandering o'er the sandy way, 
But, being ever mindful of his craft, 

Backward and forward drove he them astray, 
So thatthe tracks, which seemed before, were aft: 

His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray, 
And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft 

Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs, 

And bound them in a lump with withy twigs. 



And on his feet he tied these sandals fight, 

The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray 

His track ; and then, a self-sufficing wight, 
Like a man hastening on some distant way, 

He from Pieria's mountain bent his flight ; 

But an old man perceived the infant pass 

Down green Onchestus, heaped like beds with 



The old man stood dressing his sunny vine : 
" Halloo ! old fellow with the crooked shoulder! 

You grub those stumps? Before they will bear wine 
Methinks even you must grow a little older : 

Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine, 

As you would 'scape what might appal a bolder — 

Seeing, see not — and hearing, hear not — and — 

If you have understanding — understand." 



So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast ; 

O'er shadowy mountain and resounding dell, 
Ami flower-paven plains, groat Hermes past ; 

Till the black night divine, which favouring fell 
Around his steps, grow grey, and morning fast 

Wakened the world to work, and from her cell, 
Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime 
Into her watch-tower just began to climb. 



Now to Alpheus he had driven all 

The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun ; 

They came unwearied to the lofty stall 
And to the water troughs which ever run 

Through the fresh fields — and when with rushgrass 
Lotus and all sweet herbage, every one [tall 

Had pastured been, the Great God made them move 

Towards the stall in a collected drove. 



A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped, 
And having soon conceived the mystery 

Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stript 
The bark, and rubbed them in his palms, — on high 

Suddenly forth the burning vapour leapt, 
And the divine child saw delightedly — 

Mercury first found out for human weal 

Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint, and steel. 



And fine dry logs and roots innumerous 
He gathered in a delve upon the ground — 

And kindled them — and instantaneous 

The strength of the fierce flame was breathed 
around : 

And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus 
Wrapt the great pile with glare and roaring sound, 

Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud, 

Close to the fire — such might was in the God. 



And on the earth upon their backs he threw 
The panting beasts, and rolled them o'er and o'er, 

And bored their fives out. Without more ado 
He cut up fat and flesh, and down before 

The fire on spits of wood he placed the two, 
Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore 

Pursed in the bowels ; and while this was done 

He stretched their hides over a craggy stone. 

XXI. 

We mortals let an ox grow old, and then 
Cut it up after long consideration, — 

But joyous-minded Hermes from the glen 
Drew the fat spoils to the more open station 

Of a flat smooth space, and portioned them ; and 
He had by lot assigned to each a ration [when 

Of the twelve Gods, his mind became aware 

Of all the joys which in religion are. 

XXII. 

For the sweet savour of the roasted meat 
Tempted him, though immortal. Nathelesse 

He checked his haughty will and did not eat, 
Though what it cost him words can scarce express, 

And every wish to put such morsels sweet 
Down his most sacred throat, he did repress ; 

But soon within the lofty portalled stall 

He placed the fat and flesh and bones and all. 



HYMN TO MERCURY. 



And every trace of the fresh butchery 

And cooking, the God soon made disappear, 

As if it all had vanished through the sky; [hair, — 
He burned the hoofs and horns and head and 

The insatiate fire devoured them hungrily ; — 
And when he saw that everything waa clear, 

He quenched the coals and trampled the black dust, 

And in the stream his bloody sandals tossed. 



All night he worked in the serene moonshine — 
But when the light of day was spread abroad 

He sought his natal mountain-peaks divine. 
On his long wandering, neither man nor god 

Had met him, since he killed Apollo's kine, 
Nor house-dog had barked at him on his road 

Now he obliquely through the key-hole passed, 

Like a thin mist, or an autumnal blast. 



Right through the temple of the spacious cave 
He went with soft light feet — as if his tread 

Fell not on earth ; no sound their falling gave ; 
Then to his cradle he crept quick, and spread 

The swaddling-clothes about him ; and the knavi 
Lay playing with the covering of the bed, 

With his left hand about his knees — the right 

Held his beloved tortoise-lyre tight. 



There he lay innocent as a new-born child, 
As gossips say ; but, though he was a god, 

The goddess, his fair mother, unbeguiled 
Knew all that he had done, being abroad ; 

"Whence come you, and from what adventure wild, 
You cunning rogue, and where have you abode 

All the long night, clothed in your impudence ? 

What have you done since you departed hence ? 



" Apollo soon will pass within this gate, 
And bind your tender body in a chain 

Inextricably tight, and fast as fate, 
Unless you can delude the God again, 

Even when -within his arms— ah, runagate ! 
A pretty torment both for gods and men 



Your lather made when he made 



you 



-« Dear 



mother," 
Replied sly Hermes/' wherefore scold and bother? 

xxvin. 
" As if I were like other babes as old, 

And understood nothing of what is what ; 
And cared at all to hear my mother scold. 

I in my subtle brain a scheme have got, [rolled, 
Which, whilst the sacred stars round Heaven are 

Will profit you and me — nor shall our lot 
Be as you counsel, without gifts or food, 
To spend our lives in this obscure abode. 



"- But we will leave this shadow-peopled cave, 
And live among the Gods, and pass each day 

In high communion, sharing what they have 
Of profuse wealth and unexhausted prey 

And, from the portion which my father gave 
To Phoebus, I will snatch my share away, 

Which if my father will not— nathelesse I, 

Who am the king of robbers, can but try. 



" And, if Latona's son should find me out, 
I'll countermine him by a deeper plan ; 

I'll pierce the Pythian temple-walls, though stout, 
And sack the fane of everything I can — 

Caldrons and tripods of great worth no doubt, 
Each golden cup and polished brazen pan, 

All the wrought tapestries and garments gay." — 

So they together talked ; — meanwhile the Day 



Ethereal born, arose out of the flood 
Of flowing Ocean, bearing light to men. 

Apollo past toward the sacred wood, 

Which from the inmost depths of its green glen 

Echoes the voice of Neptune, — and there stood 
On the same spot in green Onchestus then 

That same old animal, the vine-dresser, 

Who was employed hedging his vineyard there. 

XXXII. 

Latona's glorious Son began : — " I pray 
Tell, ancient hedger of Onchestus green, 

Whether a drove of kine has past this way, 

All heifers with crookedhorns? for they have been 

Stolen from the herd in high Pieria, 

Where a black bull was fed apart, between 

Two woody mountains in a neighbouring glen, 

And four fierce dogs watched there, unanimoua as 



" And, what is strange, the author of this theft 
Has stolen the fatted heifers every one, 

But the four dogs and the black bull are left : — 
Stolen they were last night at set of sun, 

Of their soft beds and their sweet food bereft — 
Now tell me, man born ere the world begun, 

Have you seen any one pass with the cows ? " — 

To wdiom the man of overhanging brows, — 



" My friend, it would require no common skill 
Justly to speak of everything I see ; 

On various purposes of good or ill 

Many pass by my vineyard,-— and to me 

'Tis difficult to know the invisible 

Thoughts, which in all those many minds may 

Thus much alone I certainly can say, [be : — 

I tilled these vines till the decline of day, 



" And then I thought I saw, but dare not speak 
With certainty of such a wondrous thing, 

A child, who could not have been bom a week, 
Those fair-horned cattle closely following, 

And in his hand he held a polished stick : 
And, as on purpose, he walked wavering 

From one side to the other of the road, 

And with his face opposed the steps he trod." 

XXXVI. 

Apollo, hearing this, passed quickly on — 

No winged omen could have shown more clear 

That the deceiver was his father's son. 
So the God wraps a purple atmosphere 

Around his shoulders, and like fire is gone 
To famous Pylos, seeking his kine there, 

And found their track and his, yet hardly cold, 

And cried — " What wonder do mine eves behold ! 



'A'M 



TRANSLATIONS. 



XXXVII. 

" Here are the footsteps of the horned herd 

Turned back towards their Holds of asphodel ; — 
But those', are not the tracks of beast or bird, 
Grey wolf, Or boar, or lion of the dell, 

Or maned Centaur — sand was never stirred 
By man or woman thus ! Inexplicable ! 

Who with unwearied feet could e'er impress 
The sand with such enormous vestiges? 

xxxvi i r. 
" That was most strange — but this is stranger still !" 

Thus having said, Pluebus impetuously 
Sought high Cyllene's forest-cinctured hill, 

And the deep cavern where dark shadows lie, 
And where the ambrosial nymph with happy will 

Bore the Saturnian's love-child, Mercury — 
And a delighted odour from the dew 
Of the hill pastures, at his coming, flew. 



And Phoebus stooped under the craggy roof 
Arched over the dark cavern : — Maia's child 

Perceived that he came angry, far aloof, 

About the cows of which he had been beguiled, 

And over him the fine and fragrant woof 

Of his ambrosial swaddling-clothes he piled — 

As among firebrands lies a burning spark 

Covered, beneath the ashes cold and dark. 



There, like an infant who had sucked his fill, 
And now was newly washed and put to bed, 

Awake, but courting sleep with weary will 

And gathered in a lump, hands, feet, and head, 

He lay, and his beloved tortoise still 

He grasped and held under his shoulder-blade ; 

Phoebus the lovely mountain goddess knew, 

Not less her subtle, swindling baby, who 



Lay swathed in his sly wiles. Round every crook 
Of the ample cavern, for his kine Apollo 

Looked sharp ; and when he saw them not, he took 
The glittering key, and opened three great hollow 

Recesses in the rock — where many a nook 

Was filled with the sweet food immortals swallow, 

And mighty heaps of silver and of gold 

Were piled within — a wonder to behold ! 



And white and silver robes, all overwrought 
With cunning workmanship of tracery sweet. — 

Except among the Gods there can be nought 
In the wide world to be compared with it. 

Latona's offspring, after having sought 
His herds in every corner, thus did greet 

Great Hermes : — " Little cradled rogue, declare, 

Of my illustrious heifers, where they are ! 



" Speak quickly ! or a quarrel between us 
Must rise, and the event will be, that I 

Shall haul you into dismal Tartarus, 
In fiery gloom to dwell eternally ! 

Nor shall your father nor your mother loose 
The bars of that black dungeon — utterly 

You shall be cast out from the light of day, 

To rule the ghosts of men, unblest as they." 



To whom thus Hermes slily answered : — " Son 
Of groat Latona, what a speech is this ! 

Why come you here to ask me what is done 
With the wild oxen which it seems you miss? 

I have not seen them, nor from any one 
Have heai*d a word of the whole business ; 

If you should promise an immense reward, 

I could not tell more than you now have heard. 



" An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong, 
And I am but a little new-born thing, 

Who, yet at least, can think of nothing wrong : — 
My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling 

The cradle-clothes about me all day long, — 
Or, half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing, 

And to be washed in water clean and warm, 

And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm. 



" Oh, let not e'er this quarrel be averred ! 

The astounded Gods would laugh at you, if e'er 
You should allege a story so absurd, 

As that a new-born infant forth could fare 
Out of his home after a savage herd. 

I was born yesterday — my small feet are 
Too tender for the roads so hard and rough : — 
And if you think that this is not enough, 



" I swear a great oath, by my father's head, 
That I stole not your cows, and that I know 

Of no one else who might, or could, or did. — 
Whatever things cows are I do not know, 

For I have only heard the name." — This said, 
He winked as fast as could be, and his brow 

Was wrinkled, and a whistle loud gave he, 

Like one who hears some strange absurdity. 



Apollo gently smiled and said : — " Aye, aye, — 
You cunning little rascal, you will bore 

Many a rich man's house, and your array 
Of thieves will lay their siege before his door, 

Silent as night, in night ; and many a day 

In the wild glens rough shepherds will deplore 

That you or yours, having an appetite, 

Met with their cattle, comrade of the night ! 



" And this among the Gods shall be your gift, 
To be considered as the lord of those [lift ;— 

Who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, and shop- 
But now if you would not your last sleep doze, 

Crawl out !" — Thus saying, Phoebus did uplift 
The subtle infant in his swaddling-clothes, 

And in his arms, according to his wont, 

A scheme devised the illustrious Argiphont. 



And sneezed and shuddered — Phoebus on the grass 
Him threw, and whilst all that he had designed 

He did perform — eager although to pass, 
Apollo darted from his mighty mind 

Towards the subtle babe the following scoff: 

t' Do not imagine this will get you off, 



HYMN TO MERCURY. 



333 



" You little swaddled child of Jove and May !" 
And seized him : — " By this omen I shall trace 

My noble herds, and you shall lead the way." — 
Cyllenian Hermes from the grassy place, 

Like one in earnest haste to get away, 

Rose, and with hands lifted towards his face, 

Round both his ears up from his shoulders drew 

His swaddling clothes, and — " What meanyou to do 



" With me, you unkind God V — said Mercury : 
" Is it about these cows you teaze me so ? 

I wish the race of cows were perished ! — I 
Stole not your cows — I do not even know 

What things cows are. Alas ! I well may sigh, 
That, since I came into this world of woe, 

I should have ever heard the name of one — 

But I appeal to the Saturnian's throne." 



Thus Phoebus and the vagrant Mercury 

Talked without coming to an explanation, 
With adverse purpose. As for Phoebus, he 
Sought not revenge, but only information, 
And Hermes tried with lies and roguery 

To cheat Apollo. — But when no evasion 
Served — for the cunning one his match had found- 
He paced on first over the sandy ground. 



He of the Silver Bow, the child of Jove, 
Followed behind, till to their heavenly Sire 

Came both his children — beautiful as Love, 
And from his equal balance did require 

A judgment in the cause wherein they strove. 

O'er odorous Olympus and its snows 

A murmuring tumult as they came arose, — 



And from the folded depths of the great Hill, 
While Hermes and Apollo reverent stood 

Before Jove's throne, the indestructible 
Immortals rushed in mighty multitude ; 

And, whilst their seats in order due they fill, 
The lofty Thunderer in a careless mood 

To Phoebus said : — " Whence drive you this sweet 

This herald-baby, born but yesterday % — [pi'ey, 



" A most important subject, trifler, this 

To lay before the Gods !" — " Nay, father, nay, 

When you have understood the business, 
Say not that I alone am fond of prey. 

I found this little boy in a recess 

Under Cyllene's mountains far away — 

A manifest and most apparent thief, 

A scandal-monger beyond all belief. 



" I never saw his like either in heaven 
Or upon earth for knavery or craft : — 

Out of the field my cattle yester-even, 

By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed, 

He right down to the river-ford had driven ; 
And mere astonishment would make you daft 

To see the double kind of footsteps sti*ange 

He has impressed wherever he did range. 



" The cattle's track on the black dust full well 

Is evident, as if they went towards 
The place from which they came— that asphodel 

Meadow, in which I feed my many herds ; 
His steps were most incomprehensible — 

I know not how I can describe in words 
Those tracks — he could have gone along the sands 
Neither upon his feet nor on his hands ; — 



" He must have had some other stranger mode 
Of moving on : those vestiges immense, 

Far as I traced them on the sandy road, 

Seemed like the trail of oak-toppings : — but thence 

No mark nor track denoting where they trod 
The hard ground gave : — but, working at his fence, 

A mortal hedger saw him as he past 

To Pylos, with the cows, in fiery hrae. 



" I found that in the dark he quietly 

Had sacrificed some cows, and before light 

Had thrown the ashes all dispersedly 

About the road — then, still as gloomy night, 

Had crept into his cradle, either eye 

Rubbing, and cogitating some new sleight. 

No eagle could have seen him as he lay 

Hid in his cavern from the peering day. 



" I taxed him with the fact, when he averred 
Most solemnly that he did neither see 

Nor even had in any manner heard 

Of my lost cows, whatever things cows be ; 

Nor could he tell, though offered a reward, 
Not even who could tell of them to me." 

So speaking, Phoebus sate ; and Hermes then 

Addressed the Supreme Lord of Gods and Men 



" Great Father, you know clearly beforehand 
That all which I shall say to you is sooth ; 

I am a most veracious person, and 
Totally unacquainted with untruth. 

At sunrise Phoebus came, but with no band 
Of Gods to bear him witness, in great wrath 

To my abode, seeking his heifers there, 

And saying that I must show him where they are, 



" Or he would hurl me down the dark abyss. 

I know that every Apollonian limb 
Is clothed with speed and might and manliness, 

As a green bank with flowers — but unlike him 
I was born yesterday, and you may guess 

He well knew this when he indulged the whim 
Of bullying a poor little new-born thing 
That slept, and never thought of cow-driving. 



" Am I like a strong fellow who steals kine ? 

Believe me, dearest Father, such you are, 
This driving of the herds is none of mine ; 

Across my threshold did I wander ne'er, 
So may I thrive ! I reverence the divine 

Sun and the Gods, and I love you, and care 
Even for this hard accuser — who must know 
I am as innocent as they or you. 



33<; 



TRANSLATIONS. 



'• 1 swearbythesemostgloriously-wroughl portals- 

(lt is, you will allow, an oath of might) 
Through which the multitude of the Immortals 

Pass ami ivpass for e\ or, day and night, 

Devising Bchemes for the affairs of mortals — 

That 1 am guiltless; and I will requite, 
Although mine enemy be great and strong, 
His cruel threat — do thou defend the young!" 



So sjh along, the Cyllenian Argiphont 

Winked, as if now his adversary was fitted : — 

And Jupiter, according to his wont, 

Laughed heartily to hear the subtle-witted 

Infant give such a plausible account, 
And every word a lie. But he remitted 

Judgment at present — and his exhortation 

Was, to compoc? the affair by arbitration. 



And they by mighty Jupiter were bidden 
To go forth with a single purpose both, 

Neither the other chiding nor yet chidden : 
And Mercury with innocence and truth 

To lead the way, and show where he had hidden 
The mighty heifers. — Hermes, nothing loth, 

Obeyed the JJEgis-bearer's mil — for he 

Is able to persuade all easily. 



These lovely children of Heaven's highest Lord 
Hastened to Pylos and the pastures wide 

And lofty stalls by the Alphean ford, 

Where wealth in the mute night is multiplied 

With silent growth. Whilst Hermes drove the herd 
Out of the stony cavern, Phcebus spied 

The hides of those the little babe had slain, 

Stretched on the precipice above the plain. 



" How was it possible," then Phoebus said, 
" That you, a little child, born yesterday, 

A thing on mother's milk and kisses fed, 
Could two prodigious heifers ever flay ? 

E'en I myself may well hereafter dread 
Your prowess, offspring of Cyllenian May, 

When you grow strong and tall." — He spoke, and 

Stiff withy bands the infant's wrists around, [bound 



He might as well have bound the oxen wild ; 

The withy bands, though starkly interknit, 
Fell at the feet of the immortal child, 

Loosened by some device of his quick wit. 
Phoebus perceived himself again beguiled, 

And stared — while Hermes sought some hole or 
Looking askance and winking fast as thought, [pit, 
Where he might hide himself, and not be caught. 



Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill 
Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might 

Of winning music, to his mightier will ; 

His left hand held the lyre, and in his right 

The plectrum struck the chords — unconquerable 
Up from beneath his hand in circling flight 

The gathering music rose — and sweet as Love 

The penetrating notes did live and move 



Within the heart of great Apollo — he 

1. istened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure. 

Close to his side stood harping fearlessly 
The unabashed boy ; and to the measure 

Of the sweet lyre, there followed loud and free 
His joyous voice ; for he unlocked the treasure 

Of his deep song, illustrating the birth 

Of the bright Gods and the dark desert Earth : 

Lxxur. 
And how to the Immortals every one 

A portion was assigned of all that is ; 
But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son 

Clothe in the light of his loud melodies ; — 
And, as each God was born or had begun, 

He in their order due and fit degrees 
Sung of his birth and being — and did move 
Apollo to unutterable love. 



These words were winged with his swift delight : 
" You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you 

Deserve that fifty oxen should requite 

Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now. 

Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight, 
One of your secrets I would gladly know, 

Whether the glorious power you now show forth 

Was folded up within you at your birth, 



" Or whether mortal taught or God inspired 
The power of unpremeditated song ? 

Many divinest sounds have I admired 

The Olympian Gods and mortal men among ; 

But such a strain of wondrous, strange, untired, 
And soul-awakening music, sweet and strong, 

Yet did I never hear except from thee, 

Offspring of May, impostor Mercury ! 



" What Muse, what skill, what unimagined use, 
What exercise of subtlest art, has given [choose 

Thy songs such power \ — for those who hear may 
From three, the choicest of the gifts of Heaven, 

Delight, and love, and sleep, sweet sleep,whose dews 
Are sweeter than the balmy tears of even : — 

And I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo 

Whom the Olympian Muses ever follow : 



" And their delight is dance, and the blithe noise 

Of song and everflowing poesy ; 
And sweet, even as desire, the liquid voice 

Of pipes, that fills the clear air thrillingly ; 
But never did my inmost soul rejoice 

In this dear work of youthful revelry, 
As now I wonder at thee, son of Jove ; 
Thy harpings and thy song are soft as love. 



" Now since thou hast, although so very small, 
Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear, — 

And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall, 
Witness between us what I promise here, — 

That I will lead thee to the Olympian Hall, 
Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear, 

And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee, 

And even at the end will ne'er deceive thee." 



HYMN TO MERCURY. 



337 



To whom thus Mercury with prudent speech : — 
" Wisely hast thou inquired of my skill : 

I envy thee no thing I know to teach 

Even this day : — for both in word and will 

I would be gentle with thee ; thou canst reach 
All things in thy wise spirit, and thy sill 

Is highest in heaven among the sons of Jove, 

Who loves thee in the fulness of his love. 



" The Counsellor Supreme has given to thee 
Divinest gifts, out of the amplitude 

Of his profuse exhaustless treasury ; 

By thee, 'tis said, the depths are understood 

Of his far voice ; by thee the mystery 

Of all oracular fates, — and the dread mood 

Of the diviner is breathed up, even I — 

A child — perceive thy might and majesty — 



" Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit 
Can find or teach ; — yet since thou wilt, come, take 

The lyre— be mine the glory giving it — 

Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake 

Thy joyous pleasure out of many a fit 

Of tranced sound — and with fleet fingers make 

Thy liquid -voiced comrade talk with thee, — 

It can talk measured music eloquently. 



" Then bear it boldly to the revel loud, 

Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state, 

A joy by night or day — for those endowed 
With art and wisdom who interrogate 

It teaches, babbling iii delightful mood, 

All things which make the spirit most elat*\ 

Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play, 

Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay. 

LXXXIII. 

" To those who are unskilled in its sweet tongue, 
Though they should question most impetuously 

Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong — 
Some senseless and impertinent reply 

But thou who art as wise as thou art strong, 
Can'st compass all that thou desirest. I 

Present thee with this music-flowing shell, 

Knowing thou canst interrogate it well. 



" And let us two henceforth together feed 

On this green mountain slope and pastoral plain, 

The herds in litigation — they will breed 
Quickly enough to recompense our pain, 

If to the bulls and cows we take good heed ; — 
And thou, though somewhat overfond of gain, 

Grudge me not half the profit." — Having spoke, 

The shell he proffered, and Apollo took. 

IXXXV. 

And gave him in return the glittering lash, 
Installing him as herdsman ; — from the look 

Of Mercury then laughed a joyous flash ; 
And then Apollo with the plectrum strook 

The chords, and from beneath his hands a crash 
Of mighty sounds rushed up, whose music shook 

The soul with sweetness, and like an adept 

His sweeter voice a just accordance kept. 



The herd went wandering o'er the divine mead, 
Whilst these most beautiful Sons of Jupiter 

Won their swift way up to the snowy head 
Of white Olympus, with the joyous lyre 

Soothing their journey ; and their father dread 
(lathered them both into familiar 

Affection sweet, — and then, and now, and ever, 

Hermes must love Him of the Golden Quiver, 



To whom he gave the lyre that sweetly sounded, 
Which skilfully he held and played thereon. 

He piped the while, and far and wide rebounded 
The echo of his pipings ; every one 

Of the Olympians sat with joy astounded, 
While he conceived another piece of fun, 

One of his old tricks — which the God of Day 

Perceiving, said : — " I fear thee, Son of May ; — 

txxxvm. 
" 1 fear thee and thy sly chamelion spirit. 

Lest thou should'st steal my lyre and crooked bow ; 
This glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit, 

To teach all craft upon the earth below ; 
Thieves love and worship thee — it is thy merit 

To make all mortal business ebb and flow 
By roguery : — now, Hermes, if you dare 
By sacred Styx a mighty oath to swear, 



" That you will never rob me, you will do 
A thing extremely pleasing to my heart." 

Then Mercury sware by the Stygian dew, 
That he would never steal his bow or dart, 

Or lay his hands on what to him was due, 
Or ever would employ his powerful art 

Against his Pythian fane. Then Phoebus swore 

There was no God or man whom he loved more. 



tt And I will give thee as a good-will token 
The beautiful wand of wealth and happiness 

A perfect three-leaved rod of gold unbroken, 
Whose magic will thy footsteps ever bless ; 

And whatsoever by Jove's voice is spoken 
Of earthly or divine from its recess, 

It like a loving soul to thee will speak, 

And more than this do thou forbear to seek : 



" For, dearest child, the divinations high 
Which thou requirest, 'tis unlawful ever 

That thou, or any other deity, 
Should understand— and vain were the endeavour ; 

For they are hidden in Jove's mind, and I, 

In trust of them, have sworn that I would never 

Betray the counsels of Jove's inmost will 

To any God — the oath was terrible. 



" Then, golden-wanded brother, ask me not 
To speak the fates by Jupiter designed ; 

But be it mine to tell their various lot 
To the unnumbered tribes of human kind. 

Let good to these and ill to those be wrought 
As I dispense — but he who comes consigned 

By voice and wings of perfect augury 

To my great shrine, shall find avail in me. 






TRANSLATIONS. 



" Him will I not deceive, but will assist ; 

Hut he who eomea relying on such birds 
As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist 

The purpose of the Gods with idle words, 
And (looms their knowledge light.he shall have mist 

His road — whilst 1 among my other hoards 
His gifts deposit. Yot. son of May, 
1 have another wondrous thing to say : 



■ There are three Fates, three virgin Sisters, who, 
Rejoicing in their wind-outspeeding wings, 

Their heads with floor snowed over white and new, 
Sit in a vale round which Parnassus flings 

Its circling; skirts — from these I have learned true 
Vaticinations of remotest things. 

My father cared not. Whilst they search out dooms, 

They sit apart and feed on honeycombs. 



" They, having eaten the fresh honey, grow 
Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter 

With earnest willingness the truth they know ; 
But, if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter 



All plausible delusions ; — these to you 

1 give ; — if you enquire, they will not stutter 
Delight your own soul with them : — any man 
You would instruct may profit if he can. 



"Take these and the fierce oxen, Maia's child — 
O'er many a horse and toil enduring mule, 

O'er jagged-jawed lions, and the wild 

White-tusked boars, o'er all, by field or pool, 

Of cattle which the mighty Mother mild 
Nourishes in her bosom, thou shalt rule — 

Thou dost alone the veil of death uplift — 

Thou givest not — yet this is a great gift." 



Thus King Apollo loved the child of May 

In truth, and Jove covered them with love and joy. 

Hermes with Gods and men even from that day 
Mingled, and wrought the latter much annoy, 

And little profit, going far astray 

Through the dun night. Farewell, delightful Boy, 

Of Jove and Maia sprung, — never by me, 

Nor thou, nor other songs, shall unremembered be. 






TO CASTOR AND POLLUX. 



TO THE MOON. 



Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove, 
Whom the fair-ancled Leda mixed in love 
With mighty Saturn's heaven-obscuring Child, 
On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild, 
Brought forth in joy, mild Pollux void of blame, 
And steel-subduing Castor, heirs of fame. 
These are the Powers who earth-born mortals 

save 
And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave. 
When wintry tempests o'er the savage sea 
Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly 
Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow, 
Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow, 
And sacrifice with snow-white lambs, the wind 
And the huge billow bursting close behind, 
Even then beneath the weltering waters bear 
The staggering ship — they suddenly appear, 
On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky, 
And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity, 
And strew the waves on the white ocean's bed, 
Fair omen of the voyage ; from toil and dread, 
The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight, 
And plough the quiet sea in safe delight. 



Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody, 
Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy ! 
Sing the wide-winged Moon. Around the earth, 
From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth, 
Far light is scattered — boundless glory springs, 
Where'er she spreads her many-beaming wings 
The lampless air glows round her golden crown, 

But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone 
Under the sea, her beams within abide, 
Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean's tide, 
Clothing her form in garments glittering far, 
And having yoked to her immortal car 
The beam-invested steeds, whose necks on high 
Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky 
A western Crescent, borne impetuously. 
Then is made full the circle of her light, 
And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright, 
Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering 
A wonder and a sign to mortal men. [then, 

The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power 
Mingled in love and sleep — to whom she bore, 
Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare 
Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are. 

Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity, 
Fair-haired and favourable, thus with thee, 
My song beginning, by its music sweet 
Shall make immortal many a glorious feat 
Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well 
Which minstrels, servants of the muses, tell. 



HYMNS OF HOMER. 



TO THE SUN. 



Offspring of Jove, Calliope, once more 

To the bright Sun, thy hymn of music pour ; 

Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth 

Euryphaessa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth ; 

Euryphaessa, the famed sister fair, 

Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear 

A race of loveliest children ; the young Morn, 

Whose arms are like twin roses newly born, 

The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal Sun, 

Who, borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run 

Unconquerably, illuming the abodes 

Of mortal men and the eternal gods. 

Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes, 
Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise 
And are shot forth afar, clear beams of light ; 
His countenance with radiant glory bright, 
Beneath his graceful locks far shines around, 
And the light vest with which his limbs are bound, 
Of woof ethereal, delicately twined 
Glows in the stream of the uplifting wind. 
His rapid steeds soon bear him to the west; 
Where their steep flight his hands divine arrest, 
And the fleet car with yoke of gold, which he 
Sends from bright heaven beneath the shadowy sea. 



TO THE EARTH, MOTHER OF ALL. 



universal mother, who dost keep 
From everlasting thy foundations deep, 
Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee ; 
All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea, 
All things that fly, or on the ground divine 
Live, move, and there are nourished — these are 

thine ; 
These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee 
Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree 
Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity ! 



The life of mortal men beneath thy sway 
Is held ; thy power both gives and takes away ! 
Happy are they whom thy mild favours nourish, 
All things unstinted round them grow and flourish, 
For them, endures the life-sustaining field 
Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield 
Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled. 
Such honoured dwell in cities fair and free, 
The homes of lovely women, prosperously ; 
Their sons exult in youth's new budding gladness, 
And their fresh daughters free from care or sad- 
With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song, [ness, 
On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among, 
Leap round them sporting — such delights by thee 
Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity. 

Mother of gods, thou wife of starry Heaven, 
Farewell ! be thou propitious, and be given 
A happy life for this brief melody, 
Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be. 



TO MINERVA. 



I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes, 
Athenian Pallas ! tameless, chaste, and wise, 
Trilogenia, town-preserving maid, 
Revered and mighty ; from his awful head 
Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour drest 
Golden, all radiant ! wonder strange possessed 
The everlasting Gods that shape to see, 
Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously 
Rush from the crest of iEgis-bearing Jove ; 
Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move 
Beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed ; 
Earth dreadfully resounded, far and wide, 
And lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high 
In purple billows, the tide suddenly 
Stood still, and great Hyperion's son long time 
Checked his swift steeds, till where she stood sub- 
Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw [lime, 
The arms divine ; wise Jove rejoiced to view. 
Child of the JEgis-bearer, hail to thee, [be. 

Nor thine nor others' praise shall unremembered 



3 i'i 



TRANSLATIONS. 



THE CYCLOPS; 

a Jbatgrtc Drama. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF EURIPIDES. 



SiLE.vrs. 

Chorus of Satyrs. 



Ulysses. 
The Cyclops. 



SILENUS. 
Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now 
Arid ere these limbs were overworn with age, 
Have I endured for thee ! First, when thou fled'st 
The mountain-nymphs who nurst thee, driven afar 
By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee; 
Then in the battle of the sons of Earth, 
When I stood foot by foot close to thy side, 
No unpropitious fellow combatant, 
And, driving through his shield my winged spear, 
Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now, 
Is it a dream of which I speak to thee? 
By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies ! 
And now I suffer more than all before. 
For, when I heard that Juno had devised 
A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea 
With all my children quaint in search of you, 
And I myself stood on the beaked prow 
And fixed the naked mast ; and all my boys, 
Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain 
Made white with foam the green and purple sea, — 
And so we sought you, king. We were sailing 
Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose, 
And drove us to this wild ^Etnean rock ; 
The one-eyed children of the Ocean God., 
The man-destroying Cyclopses inhabit, 
On this wild shore, their solitary caves ; 
And one of these, named Polypheine, has caught us 
To be his slaves ; and so, for all delight 
Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody, 
We keep this lawless giant's wandering flocks. 
My sons indeed, on far declivities, 
Young things themselves, tend on the youngling 
But I remain to fill the water casks, [sheep, 

Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering 
Some impious and abominable meal 
To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it ! 
And now I must scrape up the littered floor 
With this great iron rake, so to receive 
My absent master and his evening sheep 



In a cave neat and clean. Even now I see 
My children tending the flocks hitherward. 
Ha ! what is this ? are your Sicinnian measures 
Even now the same as when with dance and song 
You brought young Bacchus to Athaea's halls ? 
***** 

CHORUS OF SATYRS. 



Where has he of race divine 
Wandered in the winding rocks ! 
Here the air is calm and fine 
For the father of the flocks ; — 
Here the grass is soft and sweet, 
And the river-eddies meet 
In the trough beside the cave, 
Bright as in their fountain wave. — 
Neither here, nor on the dew 
Of the lawny uplands feeding ? 
Oh, you come ! — a stone at you 
Will I throw to mend your breeding ;- 
Get along, you horned thing, 
Wild, seditious, rambling ! 



An Iacchic melody 

To the golden Aphrodite 

Will I lift, as erst did I 

Seeking her and her delight 

With the Maenads, whose white feet 

To the music glance and fleet. 

Bacchus, O beloved, where. 

Shaking wide thy yellow hair, 

Wanderest thou alone, afar ? 

To the one-eyed Cyclops, we, 

Who by right thy servants are, 

Minister in misery, 

In these wretched goat-skins clad, 

Far from thy delights and thee. 




THE CYCLOl'S. 



341 



SILENUS. 

Be silent, sons ; command the slaves to drive 
The gathered flocks into the rock-roofed cave. 

CHORUS. 

Go ! But what needs this serious haste, O father? 

SILENUS. 

I see a Grecian vessel on the coast, 

And thence the rowers, with some general, 

Approaching to this cave. About their necks 

Hang empty vessels, as they wanted food, 

And water-flasks. — miserable strangers ! 

Whence come they, that they know not what and who 

My master is, approaching in ill hour 

The inhospitable roof of Polypheme, 

And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying? 

Be silent, Satyrs, while T ask and hear, 

Whence coming, they arrive the ^iEtnean hill. 

ULYSSES. 

Friends, can you show me some clear water spring, 
The remedy of our thirst ? Will any one 
Furnish with food seamen in want of it ! 
Ha ! what is this ? We seem to be arrived 
At the blithe court of Bacchus. I observe 
This sportive band of Satyrs near the caves. 
First let me greet the elder. — Hail ! 

SILENUS. 

Hail thou, 

Stranger ! Tell thy country and thy race. 

ULYSSES. 

The Ithacan Ulysses and the king 
Of Cephalonia. 

SILENUS. 

Oh ! I know the man, 
Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus. 

ULYSSES. 

1 am the same, but do not rail upon me — 

SILENUS. 

Whence sailing do you come to Sicily? 

ULYSSES. 

From I lion, and from the Trojan toils. 

SILENUS. 

How touched you not at your paternal shore ? 

ULYSSES. 

The strength of tempests bore me here by force. 

SILENUS. 

The self-same accident occurred to me. 

ULYSSES. 

Were you then driven here by stress of weather ? 

SILENUS. 

Following the Pirates who had kidnapped Bacchus. 

ULYSSES. 

What land is this, and who inhabit it ? — 

SILENUS. 

/Etna, the loftiest peak in Sicily. 

ULYSSES. 

And are there walls, and tower surrounded towns ? 



SILEMS. 

There are not. — These lone rocks are bare of men. 

ULYI 

And who possess the land? the race of b< 

SILENUS. 

Cyclops, who live in caverns, not in houses 

ULV- 

Obeying whom ? Or is the state popular ? 

SIL!.- 

Shepherds : no one obeys any in aught. 

ULYSSES. 

How live they ? do they sow the corn of Ceres ? 

SILENUS. 

On milk and cheese, and on the flesh of sheep. 

ULYSSES. 

Have they the Bromian drink from the vine's stream ? 

SILENUS. 

Ah ! no ; they live in an ungracious land. 

ULYSSES. 

And are they just to strangers ? — hospitable ? 

SILENUS. 

They think the sweetest thing a stranger brings, 
Is his own flesh. 

ULYSSES. 

What ! do they eat man's flesh f 

SILENUS. 

No one comes here who is not eaten up. 

ULYSSES. 

The Cyclops now — where is he ? Not at home ? 

SILENUS. 

Absent on iEtna, hunting with his dogs. 

ULYSSES. 

Know'st thou what thou must do to aid us hence i 

SILENUS. 

I know not : we will help you all wc can. 

ULYSSES. 

Provide us food, of which we are in want. 

SILENUS. 

Here is not any thing, as I said, but meat. 

ULYSSES. 

But meat is a sweet remedy for hunger. 

SILENUS. 

Cow's milk there is, and store of curdled cheese. 

ULYSSES. 

Bring out : — I would see all before I bargain. 

SILENUS. 

But how much gold will you engage to give ? 

ULYSSES. 

I bring no gold, but Bacchic juice. 

SILENUS. 

O joy ! 
'Tis long since these dry lips were wet with wine 



M-: 



TRANSLATIONS. 



OITSSBS. 

Maron, the son of the Clod, gave it me. 

SILENl s. 

Whom I have nursed ■ baby in my arms. 

I i vssi-.s. 

The son of Bacchus, for your cleai*er knowledge. 

SILENUS. 

llavo you it now I— or is it in the ship? 

ULYSSES. 

Old man, this skin contains it, which you see. 

SILENUS. 

Why this would hardly be a mouthful for me. 

ULYSSES. 

Nay, twice as much as you can draw from thence. 

SILENUS. 

You speak of a fair fountain, sweet to me. 

ULYSSES. 

Would you first taste of the unmingled wine ? 

SILENUS. 

'Tis just — tasting invites the purchaser. 

ULYSSES. 

Here is the cup, together with the skin. 

SILENUS. 

Pour: that the draught may fillip my remem- 
brance. 



See! 



SILENUS. 

Papaiapaex ! what a sweet smell it has ! 



You see it then ? — 



SILENUS. 

By Jove, no ! but I smell it. 



ULYSSES. 

Taste, that you may not praise it in words only. 

SILENUS. 

Babai ! Great Bacchus calls me forth to dance ! 
Joy! joy! 

ULYSSES. 

Did it flow sweetly down your throat? 

SILENUS. 

; So that it tingled to my very nails. 

ULYSSES. 

And in addition I will give you gold. 

SILENUS. 

Let gold alone ! only unlock the cask. 

ULYSSES. 

Bring out some cheeses now, or a young goat. 

SILENUS. 

That will I do, despising any master. 

Yes, let me drink one cup, and I will give 

All that the Cyclops feed upon their mountains. 

***** 



CHORUS. 

Ye have taken Troy, and laid your hands on Helen? 

ULYSSES. 

And utterly destroyed the race of Priam. 

SILENUS. 

***** 
The wanton wretch ! She was bewitched to see 
The many-coloured anklets and the chain 
Of woven gold which girt the neck of Paris, 
And so she left that good man Menelaus. 
There should be no more women in the world 
But such as are reserved for me alone. — 
See, here are sheep, and here are goats, Ulysses ; 
Here are unsparing cheeses of pressed milk j 
Take them ; depart with what good speed ye may ; 
First leaving my reward, the Bacchic dew 
Of joy-inspiring grapes. 

ULYSSES. 

Ah me ! Alas ! 
What shall we do ? the Cyclops is at hand ! 
Old man, we perish ! whither can we fly ? 

SILENUS. 

Hide yourselves quick within that hollow rock. 

ULYSSES. 

'Twere perilous to fly into the net. 

SILENUS. 

The cavern has recesses numberless ; 
Hide yourselves quick. 

ULYSSES. 

That will I never do -• 
The mighty Troy would be indeed disgraced 
If I should fly one man. How many times 
Have I withstood with shield immoveable, 
Ten thousand Phrygians ! — If I needs must die, 
Yet will I die with glory ; — if I live, 
The praise which I have gained will yet remain. 

SILENUS. 

What, ho ! assistance, comrades, haste, assistance ! 

The Cyclops, Silenus, Ulysses ; Chorus. 
CYCLOPS. 

What is this tumult? Bacchus is not here, 
Nor tympanies nor brazen castanets. 
How are my young lambs in the cavern ? Milking 
Their dams, or playing by their sides ? And is 
The new cheese pressed into the bull-rush baskets ? 
Speak ! I'll beat some of you till you rain tears — 
Look up, not downwards, when I speak to you. 

SILENUS. 

See ! I now gape at Jupiter himself, 
I stare upon Orion and the stars. 

CYCLOPS. 

Well, is the dinner fitly cooked and laid ? 

SILENUS. 

All ready, if your throat is ready too. 

CYCLOPS. 

Are the bowls full of milk besides ? 

SILENUS. 

O'erbrimming ; 
So you may drink a tunful if } r ou will. 



THE CYCLOPS. 



343 



CYCLOPS. 

Is it ewe's milk, or cow's milk, or both mixed ?- 

SILENUS. 

Both, either ; only pray don't swallow me. 



By no means. 

***** 

What is this crowd I see beside the stalls ? 
Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern home 
I see my young lambs coupled two by two 
With willow bands ; mixed with my cheeses lie 
Their implements ; and this old fellow here 
Has his bald head broken with stripes. 



Ah me ! 
I have been beaten till I burn with fever. 

CYCLOPS. 

By whom ? Who laid his fist upon your head ? 

SILENUS. 

Those men, because I would not suffer them 
To steal your goods. 

CYCLOPS. 

Did not the rascals know 
I am a God, sprung from the race of heaven ? 

SILENUS. 

[ told them so, but they bore off your things, 
And ate the cheese in spite of all I said, 
And carried out the lambs — and said, moreover, 
They'd pin you down with a three-cubit collar, 
And pull your vitals out through your one eye, 
Torture your back with stripes ; then, binding you, 
Throw you as ballast into the ship's hold, 
And then deliver you, a slave, to move 
Enormous rocks, or found a vestibule. 

CYCLOPS. 

In truth ? Nay, haste, and place in order quickly 
The cooking knives, and heap upon the hearth, 
And kindle it, a great faggot of wood. — 
As soon as they are slaughtered, they shall fill 
My belly, broiling warm from the live coals, 
Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling 

cauldron. 
I am quite sick of the wild mountain game ; 
Of stags and lions I have gorged enough, 
And I grow hungry for the flesh of men. 

SILENUS. 

Nay, master, something new is very pleasant 

After one thing for ever, and of late 

Very few strangers have approached our cave. 

ULYSSES. 

Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale on the other side. 
We, wanting to buy food, came from our ship 
Into the neighbourhood of your cave, and here 
This old Silenus gave us in exchange 
These lambs for wine, the which he took and drank, 
And all by mutual compact, without force. 
There is no word of truth in what he says, 
For slily he was selling all your store. 



1? 



SILENUS. 

May you perish, wretch— 



If I speak false ! 
SILENUS. 

Cyclops, I swear by Neptune who begot thee, 
By mighty Triton and by Nereus old, 
Calypso and the glaucous ocean Nymphs, 
The sacred waves and all the race of fishes — 
Be these the witnesses, my dear sweet master, 
My darling little Cyclops, that I never 
Gave any of your stores to these false strangers. — 
If I speak false may those whom most I love, 
My children, perish wretchedly ! 

CHORUS. 

There stop ! 
I saw him giving these things to the strangers. 
If I speak false, then may my father perish, 
But do not thou wrong hospitality. 

CYCLOPS. 

You lie ! I swear that he is juster far 
Than Rhadamanthus — I trust more in him. 
But let me ask, whence have ye sailed, strangers ? 
Who are you ? and what city nourished ye ? 

ULYSSES. 

Our race is Ithacan. — Having destroyed 
The town of Troy, the tempests of the sea 
Have driven us on thy land, Polypheme. 



What, have ye shared in the unenvied spoil 
Of the false Helen, near Scamander's stream ? 

ULYSSES. 

The same, having endured a woeful toil. 

CYCLOPS. 

basest expedition ! Sailed ye not 

From Greece to Phrygia for one woman's sake ? 

ULYSSES. 

'Twas the Gods' work — no mortal was in fault. 
But, O great offspring of the Ocean King ! 
We pray thee and admonish thee with freedom, 
That thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee, 
And place no impious food within thy jaws. 
For in the depths of Greece we have upreared 
Temples to thy great father, which are all 
His homes. The sacred bay of Tsenarus 
Remains inviolate, and each dim recess 
Scooped high on the Malean promontory, 
And aery Sunium's silver-veined crag, 
Which divine Pallas keeps unprofaned ever, 
The Gerastian asylums, and whate'er 
Within wide Greece our enterprise has kept 
From Phrygian contumely ; and in which 
You have a common care, for you inhabit 
The skirts of Grecian land, under the roots 
Of iEtna and its crags, spotted with fire. 
Turn then to converse under human laws ; 
Receive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide 
Food, clothes, and fire, and hospitable gifts ; 
Nor, fixing upon oxen-piercing spits 
Our limbs, so fill your belly and your jaws. 
Priam's wide land has widowed Greece enough ; 
And weapon-winged murder heaped together 
Enough of dead, and wives are husbandless, 
And ancient women and grey fathers wail 
Their childless age ; — if you should roast the rest, 



:u4 



TRANSLATIONS. 



And 'tis ■ bit tor feast that von prepare, 

Where then would any turn? ret be persuaded; 

Forego the lust of your jaw-bone ; prefer 

Pious humanity to wicked will ; 

Many have bought too dear their evil joys. 

SILENT7S. 

Let me advise you ; do not spare a morsel 
Of all his flesh. It* you should oat his tongue 
You would beeomo most eloquent, O Cyclops. 

CYCLOPS. 
Wealth, my good follow, is the wise man's God; 
All other things are a pretence and boast. 
What are my father's ocean promontories, 
The sacred rooks whereon he dwells, to me ? 
Stranger, 1 laugh to scorn Jove's thunderbolt, 
I know not that his strength is more than mine. 
As to the rest I care not. — When he pours 
Rain from above, I have a close pavilion 
Under this rock, in which I lie supine, 
Feasting on a roast calf or some wild beast, 
And drinking pans of milk, and gloriously 
Emulating the thunder of high heaven. 
And when the Thracian wind pours down the 

snow, 
I wrap my body in the skins of beasts, 
Kindle a fire, and bid the snow whirl on. 
The earth by force, whether it will or no, 
Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and herds, 
Which, to what other God but to myself 
And this great belly, first of deities, 
Should I be bound to sacrifice ? I well know 
The wise man's only Jupiter is this, 
To eat and drink during his little day, 
And give himself no care. And as for those 
Who complicate with laws the life of man, 
I freely give them tears for their reward. 
I will not cheat my soul of its delight, 
Or hesitate in dining upon you : — ■ 
And that I may be quit of all demands, 
These are my hospitable gifts ; — fierce fire 
And yon ancestral cauldron, which o'erbubbling 
Shall finely cook your miserable flesh. 
Creep in ! — 



Ay, ay ! I have escaped the Trojan toils, 

I have escaped the sea, and now I fall 

Under the cruel grasp of one impious man. 

O Pallas, mistress, Goddess, sprung from Jove, 

Now, now, assist me ! Mightier toils than Troy 

Are these ; — I totter on the chasms of peril ; — 

And thou who inhabitest the thrones 

Of the bright stars, look, hospitable Jove, 

Upon this outrage of thy deity, 

Otherwise be considered as no God. 

chorus [alone). 
For your gaping gulf and your gullet wide 
The ravine is ready on every side ; 
The limbs of the strangers are cooked and done, 
There is boiled meat, and roast meat, and meat 

from the coal, 
You may chop it, and tear it, and gnash it for fun, 
A hairy goat's skin contains the whole. 
Let me but escape, aud ferry me o'er 
The stream of your wrath to a safer shore. 



The Cyclops iEtnean is cruel and bold, 
lie murdei's the strangers 

That sit on his hearth, 
And dreads no avengers 
To rise from the earth. 
He roasts the men before they are cold, 
Ho snatches them broiling from the coal, 
And from the cauldron pulls them whole, 
And minces their flesh and gnaws their bone 
With his cursed teeth, till all be gone. 

Farewell, foul pavilion ! 

Farewell, rites of dread ! 
The Cyclops vermilion, 
With slaughter uncloying, 

Now feasts on the dead, 
In the flesh of strangers joying! 

ULYSSES. 

Jupiter ! I saw within the cave 

Horrible things ; deeds to be feigned in words, 

But not believed as being done. 

CHORUS. 

What ! sawest thou the impious Polypheme 
Feasting upon your loved companions now ? 

ULYSSES. 

Selecting two, the plumpest of the crowd, 
He grasped them in his hands. — 



Unhappy man ! 
******* 

ULYSSES. 

Soon as we came into this craggy place, 

Kindling a fire, he cast on the broad hearth 

The knotty limbs of an enormous oak, 

Three waggon-loads at least, and then he strewed 

Upon the ground, beside the red fire light, 

His couch of pine leaves ; and he milked the cows, 

And pouring forth the white milk, filled a bowl 

Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much 

As would contain four amphorae, and bound it 

With ivy wreaths ; then placed upon the fire 

A brazen pot to boil, and make red hot 

The points of spits, not sharpened with the sickle, 

But with a fruit-tree bough, and with the jaws 

Of axes for JEtnean slaughterings*. 

And when this God-abandoned cook of hell 

Had made all ready, he seized two of us, 

And killed them in a kind of measured manner ; 

For he flung one against the brazen rivets 

Of the huge cauldron, and seized the other 

By the foot's tendon, and knocked out his brains 

Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone : 

Then peeled his flesh with a great cooking knife, 

And put him down to roast. The other's limbs 

He chopped into the cauldron to be boiled. 

And I, with the tears raining from my eyes, 

Stood near the Cyclops, ministering to him ; 

The rest, in the recesses of the cave, 

Clung to the rock like bats, bloodless with fear. 

When he was filled with my companions' flesh, 

He threw himself upon the ground, and sent 

A loathsome exhalation from his maw. 

Then a divine thought came to me. I filled 

The cup of Maron, and I offered him 

* I confess I do not understand this.— Note of the Author. 



THE CYCLOPS. 



'M 5 



To taste, and said : — ** Child of the Ocean-God, 
Behold what drink the vines of Greece produce, 
The exultation and the joy of Bacehus." 
He, satiated with his unnatural food. 
Received it, and at one draught drank it off, 
And, taking my hand, praised me : — " Thou hast 

giren 
A sweet draught after a sweet meal, dear guest." 
And I, perceiving that it pleased him, tilled 
Another cup, well knowing that the wine 
Would wound him soon and take a sure revenge. 
And the charm fascinated him, and I 
Plied him cup after cup, until the drink 
Had wanned his entrails, and he sang aloud 
In concert with my wailing fellow-seamen 
A hideous discord — and the cavern rung. 
I have stolen out, so that if you will 
You may achieve my safety and your own. 
But say, do you desire, or not, to fly 
This uncompanionable man, and dwell, 
As was your wont, among the Grecian njmphs, 
Within the fanes of your beloved God? 
Your father there within agrees to it, 
But he is weak and overcome with wine, 
And caught as if with birdlime by the cup, 
He claps his wings and crows in doating joy. 
You who are young escape with me, and find 
Bacchus your ancient friend ; unsuited he 
To this rude Cyclops. 

CHORUS. 

my dearest friend, 
That I could see that day, and leave for ever 
The impious Cyclops. 



ULYSSES. 

Listen then what a punishment I have 
For this fell monster, how secure a flight 
From your hard servitude. 

CHORUS. 

Oh sweeter far 
Than is the music of an Asian lyre 
Would be the news of Polypheme destroyed. 

ULYSSES. 

Delighted with the Bacchic drink, he goes 
To call his brother Cyclops — who inhabit 
A village upon iEtna not far off. 

CHORUS. 

I understand : catching him when alone, 
You think by some measure to despatch him, 
Or thrust him from the precipice. 

ULYSSES. 

Ono; 
Nothing of that kind ; my device is subtle. 



How then ? 



CHORUS. 

I heard of old that thou wert wise. 



ULYSSES. 

I will dissuade him from this plan, by saying ' 
It were unwise to give the Cyclopses* 
This precious drink, which if enjoyed alone 
Would make life sweeter for a longer time. 
When vanquished by the Bacchic power, he 
sleeps, 



There is a trunk of olive-wood within, 

Whose point, having made sharp with this good 

sword, 
I will conceal in fire, and when I see 
It is alight, will fix it, burning yet, 
Within the socket of the Cyclops' eye, 
And melt it out with fire — as when a man 
Turns by its handle a great auger round, 
Fitting the frame-work of a ship with beams, 
So will I in the Cyclops 1 fiery eye 
Turn round the brand, and dry the pupil up. 

CHORIS. 

Joy ! I am mad with joy at your device. 

ULYSSES. 

And then with you, my friends, and the old man, 
We'll load the hollow depth of our black ship, 
And row with double strokes from this dread 
shore. 

CHORUS. 

May I, as in libations to a God, 

Share in the blinding him with the red brand ? 

I would have some communion in his death. 

ULYSSES. 

Doubtless ; the brand is a great brand to hold. 

CHORUS. 

Oh ! I would lift a hundred waggon-loads, 
If like a wasp's nest I could scoop the eye out 
Of the detested Cyclops. 

ULYSSES. 

Silence now ! 
Ye know the close device — and when I call, 
Look ye obey the masters of the craft. 
I will not save myself and leave behind 
My comrades in the cave : I might escape, 
Having got clear from that obscure recess, 
But 'twere unjust to leave in jeopardy 
The dear companions who sailed here with me, 

CHORUS. 

Come ! who is first, that with his hand 
Will urge down the burning brand 
Through the lids, and quench and pierce 
The Cyclops' eye so fiery fierce ? 

semi-chorus i. Song within. 
Listen ! listen ! he is coming, 
A most hideous discord humming, 
Drunken, museless, awkward, yelling, 
Far along his rocky dwelling ; 
Let us with some comic spell 
Teach the yet unteachable. 
By all means he must be blinded, 
If my counsel be but minded. 

SEMI-CHORUS II. 

Happy those made odorous 

With the dew which sweet grapes weep, 

To the village hastening thus, 

Seek the vines that soothe to sleep, 

Having first embraced thy friend, 

There in luxury without end, 

With the strings of yellow hair, 

Of thy voluptuous leman fair, 

Shalt sit playing on a bed ! — 

Speak, what door is opened ? 



346 



TRANSLATIONS. 



era 

Ha ! ha ! lia ! I'm full of wine, 
Heavy with the joy divine, 

With the young feast oversatod. 
Like a merchant's vessel freighted 
To the water's edge, my crop 
Is laden to the gullet's top. 

The fresh meadow grass of spring 
Tempts me forth, thus wandering 

To my brothers on the mountains, 

Who shall share the wine's sweet fountains. 

Bring the cask, stranger, bring ! 

CHORUS. 

One with eyes the fairest 

Cometh from his dwelling ; 

Some one loves thee, rarest, 

Bright beyond my telling. 

In thy grace thou shinest 

Like some nymph divinest, 

In her caverns dewy ; — 

All delights pursue thee, 

Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing, 

Shall thy head be wreathing. 

ULYSSES. 

Listen, Cyclops, for I am well skilled 
In Bacchus, whom I gave thee of to drink. 

CYCLOPS. 

What sort of God is Bacchus then accounted ? 

ULYSSES. 

The greatest among men for joy of life. 

CYCLOPS. 

I gulpt him down with very great delight. 

ULYSSES. 

This is a God who never injures men. 

CYCLOPS. 

How does the God like living in a skin ? 

ULYSSES. 

He is content w T herever he is put. 

CYCLOPS. 

Gods should not have their body in a skin. 

ULYSSES. 

If he give joy, what is his skin to you ? 

CYCLOPS. 

I hate the skin, but love the wine within. 

ULYSSES. 

Stay here ; now drink, and make your spirit glad. 

CYCLOPS. 

Should I not share this liquor with my brothers ? 

ULYSSES. 

Keep it yourself, and be more honoured so. 

CYCLOPS. 

I were more useful, giving to my friends. 

ULYSSES. 

But village mirth breeds contests, broils, and blows. 

CYCLOPS. 

When I am drunk none shall lay hands on me. — 

ULYSSES. 

A drunken man is better within doors. 



CYCLOPS. 

He is a fool, who drinking loves not mirth. 

ULYSSES. 

But he is wise, who drunk, remains at home. 

CYCLOPS. 

What shall I do, Silenus ? Shall I stay ? 

SILENUS. 

Stay — for what need have you of pot companions? 

CYCLOPS. 

Indeed this place is closely carpeted 
With flowers and grass. 

SILENUS. 

And in the sun-warm noon 
'Tis sweet to drink. Lie down beside me now, 
Placing your mighty sides upon the ground. 

CYCLOPS. 

What do you put the cup behind me for ? 

SILENUS. 

That no one here may touch it. 

CYCLOPS. 

Thievish one ! 
You want to drink;- here place it in the midst. 
And thou, stranger, tell how art thou called ! 

ULYSSES. 

My name is Nobody. What favour now 
Shall I receive to praise you at your hands ? 

CYCLOPS. 

I'll feast on you the last of your companions. 

ULYSSES. 

You grant your guest a fair reward, O Cyclops. 

CYCLOPS. 

Ha ! what is this 1 Stealing the wine, you rogue ! 

SILENUS. 

It was this stranger kissing me, because 
I looked so beautiful. 

CYCLOPS. 

You shall repent 
For kissing the coy wine that loves you not. 

SILENUS. 

By Jupiter ! you said that I am fair. 

CYCLOPS. 

Pour out, and only give me the cup full. 

SILENCS. 

How is it mixed ? Let me observe. 

CYCLOPS. 

Curse you ! 
Give it me so. 

SILENUS. 

Not till I see you wear 
That coronal, and taste the cup to you. 

CYCLOPS. 

Thou wily traitor ! 

SILENUS. 

But the wine is sweet. 
Aye, you will roar if you are caught in drinking. 

CYCLOPS. 

See now, my Kp is clean and all my beard. 



THE CYCLOPS. 



:ui 



SILENUS. 

Now put your elbow right, and drink again. 
As you see me drink — • • • 

CYCLOPS. 

How now ? 

SILENUS. 

Ye Gods, what a delicious gulp ! 

CYCLOPS. 

Guest, take it ; — you pour out the wine for me. 

ULYSSES. 

The wine is well accustomed to my hand. 

CYCLOPS. 

Pour out the wine ! 

ULYSSES. 

I pour ; only be silent. 

CYCLOPS. 

Silence is a hard task to him who drinks. 

ULYSSES. 

Take it and drink it off ; leave not a dreg. 

Oh, that the drinker died with his own draught ! 

CYCLOPS. 

Papai ! the vine must be a sapient plant. 

ULYSSES. 

If you drink much after a mighty feast, 
Moistening your thirsty maw, you will sleep well; 
If you leave aught, Bacchus will dry you up. 

CYCLOPS. 

Ho ! ho ! I can scarce rise. What pure delight ! 

The heavens and earth appear to whirl about 

Confusedly. I see the throne of Jove 

And the clear congregation of the Gods. 

Now if the Graces tempted me to kiss, 

1 would not, for the loveliest of them all 

I would not leave this Ganymede. 



Polypheme, 
I am the Ganymede of Jupiter. 

CYCLOPS. 

By Jove you are ; I bore you off from Dardanus. 

Ulysses and the Chorus. 
ULYSSES. 

Come, boys of Bacchus, children of high race, 
This man within is folded up in sleep, 
And soon will vomit flesh from his fell maw ; 
The brand under the shed thrusts out its smoke, 
No preparation needs, but to burn out 
The monster's eye; — but bear yourselves like 
men. 

CHORUS. 

We will have courage like the adamant rock. 
All things are ready for you here ; go in, 
Before our father shall perceive the noise. 

ULYSSES. 

Vulcan, iEtnean king ! burn out with fire 
The shining eye of this thy neighbouring monster ! 
And thou, Sleep, nursling of gloomy night, 
Descend unmixed on this God-hated beast, 
And suffer not Ulysses and his comrades, 
Returning from their famous Trojan toils, 
To perish by this man, who cares not either 



For God or mortal ; or I needs must think 

That Chance is a supreme divinity, 

And things divine are subject to her power. 

CHORUS. 

Soon a crab the throat will seize 
Of him who feeds upon his guest, 

Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes 
In revenge of such a feast ! 

A great oak stump now is lying 

In the ashes yet undying. 

Come, Maron, come ! 
Raging let him fix the doom, 
Let him tear the eyelid up, 
Of the Cyclops — that his cup 

May be evil ! 
Oh, I long to dance and revel 
With sweet Bromian, long desired, 
In loved ivy- wreaths attired ; 

Leaving this abandoned home — 

Will the moment ever come ? 

ULYSSES. 

Be silent, ye wild things ! Nay, hold your peace, 
And keep your lips quite close ; dare not to 

breathe, 
Or spit, or e'en wink, lest ye wake the monster, 
Until his eye be tortured out with fire. 

CHORUS. 

Nay, we are silent, and we chaw the air. 

ULYSSES. 

Come now, and lend a hand to the great stake 
Within — it is delightfully red hot. 

CHORUS. 

You then command who first should seize the stake 
To burn the Cyclops' eye, that all may share 
In the great enterprise. 

SEMI-CHORUS I. 

We are too few ; 
We cannot at this distance from the door 
Thrust fire into his eye. 

SEMI-CHORUS II. 

And we just now 
Have become lame ; cannot move hand nor foot. 

CHORUS. 

The same thing has occurred to us ; — our ancles 
Are sprained with standing here, I know not how. 

ULYSSES. 

What, sprained with standing still ? 

CHORUS. 

And there is dust 
Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence. 

ULYSSES. 

Cowardly dogs ! ye will not aid me, then ? 

CHORUS. 

With pitying my own back and my back-bone, 

And with not wishing all my teeth knocked out! 

This cowardice comes of itself — but stay, 

I know a famous Orphic incantation 

To make the brand stick of its own accord 

Into the skull of this one-eyed son of Earth. 

ULYSSES. 

Of old I knew ye thus by nature ; now 
I know ye better. — I will use the aid 



948 



TRANSLATIONS. 



Of my own comrades— yet though weak of hand 

Speak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken 

The courage of my friends with your blithe words. 

CHORUS. 
This I will do with peril of my life, 
And blind you with my exhortations, Cyclops. 

Hasten and thrust, 
And parch up to dust, 
The eye of the beast, 
Who feeds on his guest. 
Burn and blind 
The ^Etnean hind ! 
Scoop and draw, 
But beware lest he claw 
Your limbs near his maw. 

CYCLOPS. 

Ah me ! my eye-sight is parched up to cinders. 

CHORUS. 

What a sweet paean ! sing me that again ! 

CYCLOPS. 

Ah me ! indeed, what woe has fallen upon me ! 
But, wretched nothings, think ye not to flee 
Out of this rock ; I, standing at the outlet, 
Will bar the way, and catch you as you pass. 

CHORUS. 

What are you roaring out, Cyclops ? 



For you are wicked. 



CYCLOPS. 
CHORUS. 



I perish ! 



CYCLOPS. 

And besides miserable. 



CHORUS. 

What, did you fall into the fire when drunk ? 

CYCLOPS. 

'Twas Nobody destroyed me. 



Can be to blame. 



Who blinded me. 



Why then no one 



CYCLOPS. 

I say 'twas Nobody 



CHORUS. 

Why then, you are not blind ! 

CYCLOPS. 

I wish you were as blind as I am. 

CHORUS. 

Nay, 
It cannot be that no one made you blind. 

CYCLOPS. 

You jeer me ; where, I ask, is Nobody ? 

CHORUS. 

No where, Cyclops * * * 

CYCLOPS. 

It was that stranger ruined me : — the wretch 
First gave me wine, and then burnt out my eye, 
For wine is strong and hard to struggle with. 
Have they escaped, or are they yet within ? 



CHORUS. 

They stand under the darkness of the rock, 
And cling to it. 

CYCLOPS. 

At my right hand or left ? 

CHORUS. 

Close on your right. 

CYCLOPS. 

Where ? 

CHORUS. 

Near the rock itself. 
You have them. 

CYCLOPS. 

Oh, misfortune on misfortune ! 
I've crack'd my skull. 

CHORUS. 

Now they escape you there. 

CYCLOPS. 

Not there, although you say so. 



CHORUS. 
CYCLOPS. 



Not on that side. 



Where then ? 



CHORUS. 

They creep about you on your left. 

CYCLOPS. 

Ah ! I am mocked ! They jeer me in my ills. 

CHORUS. 

Not there ! he is a little there beyond you. 

CYCLOPS. 

Detested wretch ! where are you ? 

ULYSSES. 

Far from yuu 
I keep with care this body of Ulysses. 

CYCLOPS. 

What do you say ? You proffer a new name. 

ULYSSES. 

My father named me so ; and I have taken 

A full revenge for your unnatural feast ; 

I should have done ill to have burned down Troy, 

And not revenged the murder of my comrades. 

CYCLOPS. 

Ai ! ai ! the ancient oracle is accomplished ; 
It said that I should have my eyesight blinded 
By you coming from Troy, yet it foretold 
That you should pay the penalty for this 
By wandering long over the homeless sea. 

ULYSSES. 

I bid thee weep — consider what I say, 
I go towards the shore to drive my ship 
To mine own land, o'er the Sicilian wave. 

CYCLOPS. 

Not so, if whelming you with this huge stone 
I can crush you and all your men together ; 
I will descend upon the shore, though blind, 
Groping my way adown the steep ravine. 

CHORUS. 

And we, the shipmates of Ulysses now, 
Will serve our Bacchus all our happy lives. 



EPIGRAMS AND SONNETS. 



:;4i> 



EPIGRAMS. 



SPIRIT OF PLATO. 



FHOM THE GREEK. 



Eagle ! why soarest thou above that tomb ? 
To what sublime and star-y-paven home 

Floatest thou ? 
I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, 
Ascending heaven — Athens does inherit 

His corpse below. 



FROM THE GREEK. 

A man who was about to hang himself, 
Finding a purse, then threw away his rope ; 
The owner coming to reclaim his pelf, 
The halter found and used it. So is Hope 
Changed for Despair — one laid upon the shelf, 
We take the other. Under heaven's high cope 
Fortune is God — all you endure and do 
Depends on circumstance as much as you. 



TO STELLA. 

FROM PLATO. 



Thou wert the morning star among the living, 
Ere thy fair light had fled ; — 

Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving 
New splendour to the dead. 



FROM PLATO. 



Kissing Helena, together 
With my kiss, my soul beside it 
Came to my lips, and there I kept it, — 
For the poor thing had wandered thither, 
To follow where the kiss should guide it, 
O, cruel I, to intercept it ! 



SONNETS FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS. 



Tav a\a ruv yKavKav orav &ve/j.os a.Tp4fia flaWy, — K. t 



. A. 



I. 

When winds that move not its calm surface sweep 
The azure sea, I love the land no more : 
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep 
Tempt my unquiet mind. — But when the roar 
Of ocean's grey abyss resounds, and foam 
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst, 
I turn from the drear aspect to the home 
Of earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed, 
When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody ; 
Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea, 
Whose prey, the wandering fish, an evil lot 
Has chosen. — But I my languid limbs will fling 
Beneath the plane, where the brook's murmuring 
Moves the calm spirit but disturbs it not. 



Pan loved his neighbour Echo — but that child 
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping ; 
The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild 
The bright nymph Lyda — and so the three went 

weeping. 
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr ; 
The Satyr, Lyda — and thus love consumed 

them. — 
And thus to each — which was a woeful matter — 
To bear what they inflicted, justice doomed them ; 
For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover, 
Each, loving, so was hated. — Ye that love not 
Be warned — in thought turn this example over, 
That, when ye love, the like return ye prove not. 



SONNET FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE. 



DANTE ALIGHIERI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI. 

Gumo, I would that Lappo, thou, and I, 
Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend 
A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly 
With winds at will where'er our thoughts might 
So that no change, nor any evil chance, [wend, 
Should mar our joyous voyage ; but it might be, 



That even satiety should still enhance 
Between our hearts their strict community ; 
And that the bounteous wizard then would place 
Vanna and Bice and my gentle love, 
Companions of our wandering, and would grace 
With passionate talk, wherever we might rove, 
Our time, and each were as content and free 
As I believe that thou and I should be. 






TRANSLATIONS. 



SCENES 



THE "MAGICO PRODIGIOSO" OF CALDERON. 



Cyprian as a Student ; Clarin and Moscon as poor 
Scholars, with books. 

CYPRIAN. 

In the sweet solitude of this calm place, 

This intricate wild wilderness of trees 

And flowers and undergrowth of odorous plants, 

Leave me ; the books you brought out of the house 

To me are ever best society. 

And whilst with glorious festival and song 

Antioch now celebrates the consecration 

Of a proud temple to great Jupiter, 

And bears his image in loud jubilee 

To its new shrine, I would consume what still 

Lives of the dying day, in studious thought, 

Far from the throng and turmoil. You, my friends, 

Go and enjoy the festival ; it will 

Be worth the labour, and return for me 

When the sun seeks its grave among the billows, 

Which among dim grey clouds on the horizon 

Dance like white plumes upon a hearse ; — and here 

I shall expect you. 

MOSCON. 

I cannot bring my mind, 
Great as my haste to see the festival 
Certainly is, to leave you, Sir, without 
Just saying some three or four hundred words. 
How is it possible that on a day 
Of such festivity, you can bring your mind 
To come forth to a solitary country 
With three or four old books, and turn your back 
On all this mirth \ 

CLARIN. 

My master's in the right ; 
There is not anything more tiresome 
Than a procession day, with troops of men, 
And dances, and all that. 

MOSCON. 

From first to last, 
Clarin, you are a temporizing flatterer ; 
You praise not what you feel, but what he does ; — 
Toadeater ! 

CLARIN. 

You lie — under a mistake — 
For this is the most civil sort of he 
That can be given to a man's face. I now 
Say what I think. 



CYPRIAN. 

Enough, you foolish fellows, 
Puffed up with your own doting ignorance, 
You always take the two sides of one question. 
Now go, and as I said, return for me 
When night falls, veiling in its shadows wide 
This glorious fabric of the universe. 

MOSCON. 

How happens it, although you can maintain 
The folly of enjoying festivals, 
That yet you go there % 

CLARIN. 

Nay, the consequence 
Is clear : — who ever did what he advises 
Others to do \ — 

MOSCON. 

Would that my feet were wings, 
So would I fly to Livia. 

lExit. 
CLARIN. 

To speak truth, 
Livia is she who has surprised my heart ; 
But he is more than half way there. — Soho ! 
Livia, I come ; good sport, Livia, soho ! 

lExiu 

CYPRIAN. 

Now since I am alone, let me examine 

The question which has long disturbed my mind 

With doubt, since first I read in Plinius 

The words of mystic import and deep sense 

In which he defines God. My intellect 

Can find no God with whom these marks and signs 

Fitly agree. It is a hidden truth 

Which I must fathom. 

{Reads. 

Enter the Devil, as a fine Gentleman. 
DAEMON. 

Search even as thou wilt, 
But thou shalt never find what I can hide. 

CYPRIAN. 

What noise is that among the boughs ? Who mo ves ? 
What art thou ?— 

D^JION. 

'Tis a foreign gentleman. 
Even from this morning I have lost my way 



SCENES FROM CALDERON. 



:<:>! 



In this wild place, and my poor horse, at last 
Quite overcome, has stretched himself upon 
The enamelled tapestry of this mossy mountain, 
And feeds and rests at the same time. I was 
Upon my way to Antioch upon business 
Of some importance, but wrapt up in cares 
(Who is exempt from this inheritance ?) 
I parted from my company, and lost 
My way, and lost my servants and my comrades. 

CYPRIAN. 

Tis singular, that, even within the sight 
Of the high towers of Antioch, you could lose 
Your way. Of all the avenues and green paths 
Of this wild wood there is not one but leads, 
As to its centre, to the walls of Antioch ; 
Take which you will you cannot miss your road. 

DAEMON. 

And such is ignorance ! Even in the sight 
Of knowledge it can draw no profit from it. 
But, as it still is early, and as I 
Have no acquaintances in Antioch, 
Being a stranger there, I will even wait 
The few surviving hours of the day, 
Until the night shall conquer it. I see, 
Both by your dress and by the books in which 
You find delight and company, that you 
Are a great student ; — for my part, I feel 
Much sympathy with such pursuits. 



Studied much ?- 



Have you 



D.EMON. 

No ; — and yet I know enough 
Not to be wholly ignorant. 

CYPRIAN. 

Pray, Sir, 
What science may you know ? — 



Many. 



Alas! 



Much pains must we expend on one alone, 
And even then attain it not ; — but you 
Have the presumption to assert that you 
Know many without study. 

BJEMON. 

And with truth. 
For, in the country whence I come, sciences 
Require no learning, — they are known. 

CYPRIAN. 

Oh, would 
I were of that bright country ! for in this 
The more we study, we the more discover 
Our ignorance. 

DAEMON. 

It is so true, that I 
Had so much arrogance as to oppose 
The chair of the most high Professorship, 
And obtained many votes, and though I lost, 
The attempt was still more glorious than the 

failure 
Could be dishonourable : if jou believe not, 



Let us refer it to dispute respecting 
That which you know best, and although I 
Know not the opinion you maintain, and though 
It be the true one, I will take the contrary. 

CYPRIAN. 

The offer gives me pleasure. I am now 
Debating with myself upon a passage 
Of Plinius, and rny mind is racked with doubt 
To understand and know who is the God 
Of whom he speaks. 

daemon. 

It is a passage, if 
I recollect it right, couched in these words : 
" God is one supreme goodness, one pure essence, 
One substance, and one sense, all sight, all hands." 



'Tis true. 



DAEMON. 
What difficulty find you here \ 



CYPRIAN. 

I do not recognize among the Gods 

The God defined by Plinius : if he must 

Be supreme goodness, even Jupiter 

Is not supremely good ; because we see 

His deeds are evil, and his attributes 

Tainted with mortal weakness. In what manner 

Can supreme goodness be consistent with 

The passions of humanity ? 

DAEMON. 

The wisdom 
Of the old world masked with the names of Gods 
The attributes of Nature and of Man ; 
A sort of popular philosophy. 

CYPRIAN. 

This reply will not satisfy me, for 

Such awe is due to the high name of God, 

That ill should never be imputed. Then, 

Examining the question with more care, 

It follows, that the gods should always will 

That which is best, were they supremely good. 

How then does one will one thing — one another ? 

And you may not say that I allege 

Poetical or philosophic learning : — 

Consider the ambiguous responses 

Of their oracular statues ; from two shrines 

Two armies shall obtain the assurance of 

One victory. Is it not indisputable 

That two contending wills can never lead 

To the same end ? And, being opposite, 

If one be good is not the other evil 1 

Evil in God is inconceivable ; 

But supreme goodness fails among the gods 

Without their union. 

D^MON. 

I deny your major. 
These responses are means towards some end 
Unfathomed by our intellectual beam. 
They are the work of providence, and more 
The battle's loss may profit those who lose, 
Than victory advantage those who win. 

CYPRIAN. 

That I admit, and yet that God should not 
(Falsehood is incompatible with deity) 



352 



TRANSLATIONS. 



ra the victory, it would be enough 
To have permitted the defeat ; If God 
Be all Bight,— God, who behold the truth, 

Would not have given assurance of an end 
Never to be accomplished ; thus, although 
The Deity may according to his attributes 
Be -well distinguished into persons, vet, 

Even in the minutest eireunistanee, 
His essence must be one. 

DJKBtON. 

To attain the end, 
The affections of the actors in the scene 
Must have been thus influenced by his voice. 

CYPRIAN. 

But for a purpose thus subordinate 

He might have employed genii, good or evil, — 

A sort of spirits called so by the learned. 

Who roam about inspiring good or evil, 

And from whose influence and existence we 

May well infer our immortality : — 

Thus God might easily, without descending 

To a gross falsehood in his proper person, 

Have moved the affections by this mediation 

To the just point. 

DEMON. 

These trifling contradictions 
Do not suffice to impugn the unity 
Of the high gods ; in things of great importance 
They still appear unanimous ; consider 
That glorious fabric — man, his workmanship, 
Is stamped with one conception. 

CYPRIAN. 

Who made man 
Must have, methinks, the advantage of the others. 
If they are equal, might they not have risen 
In opposition to the work, and being 
All hands, according to our author here, 
Have still destroyed even as the other made ? 
If equal in their power, and only unequal 
In opportunity, which of the tw r o 
Will remain conqueror ? 



On impossible 
And false hypothesis, there can be built 
No argument. Say, what do you infer 
From this \ 



That there must be a mighty God 
Of supreme goodness and of highest grace, 
AH sight, all hands, all truth, infallible, 
Without an equal and without a rival ; 
The cause of all things and the effect of nothing, 
One power, one will, one substance,and one essence. 
And in whatever persons, one or two, 
His attributes may be distinguished, one 
Sovereign power, one solitary essence, 
One cause of all cause. 

{They rise. 

D.EMON. 

How can I impugn 
So clear a consequence ? 



Mv victorv ? 



Do you regret 



P.EMON. 

Who but regrets a check 
In rivalry of wit? I could reply 
And urge new difficulties, but will now 
Depart, for 1 hear steps of men approaching, 
And it is time that I should now pursue 
My journey to the city. 

CYPRIAN. 

Go in peace ! 

D^MON. 

Remain in peace ! Since thus it profits him 
To study, I will wrap his senses up 
In sweet oblivion of all thought but of 
A piece of excellent beauty ; and as I 
Have power given me to wage enmity 
Against Justina's soul, I will extract 
From one effect two vengeances. 

[Exit. 

CYPRIAN. 

I never 
Met a more learned person. Let me now 
Revolve this doubt again with careful mind. 

\Ee reads. 

Enter Lelio and Floro. 
LELIO. 

Here stop. Those toppling rocks and tangled 
Impenetrable by the noonday beam, [boughs, 

Shall be sole witnesses of what we— 

FLORO. 

Draw ! 

If there were words, here is the place for deeds. 

LELIO. 

Thou needest not instruct me ; well I know 
That in the field the silent tongue of steel 
Speaks thus. 

IThty fight. 

CYPRIAN. 

Ha ! what is this ? Lelio, Floro, 
Be it enough that Cyprian stands between you, 
Although unarmed. 

LELTO. 

Whence comest thou, to stand 
Between me and my vengeance ? 



FLORO. 



From what rocks 



And desert cells ? 



Enter Moscon and Clarin. 
MOSCON. 

Run, run ! for where we left my master, 
We hear the clash of swords. 

CLARIN. 

I never 
Run to approach things of this sort, but only 
To avoid them. Sir ! Cyprian ! sir ! 

CYPRIAN. 

Be silent, fellows ! What ! two friends who are 
In blood and fame the eyes and hope of Antioch 
One of the noble men of the Colatti, 
The other son of the Governor, adventure 
And cast away, on some slight cause no doubt, 
Two hives, the honour of their country ? 



SCENE8 FROM CALDERON. 



:m 



Cyprian, 

Although my high respect towards your person 
Holds now my sword suspended, thou canst not 
Restore it to the slumber of its scabbard. 
Thou knowest more of science than the duel ; 
For when two men of honour take the field, 
No counsel nor respect can make them friends, 
But one must die in the pursuit. 



I pray 
That jou depart hence with your people, and 
Leave us to finish what we have begun 
Without advantage. 

CYPRIAN. 

Though you may imagine 
That I know little of the laws of duel, 
Which vanity and valour instituted, 
You are in error. By my birth I am 
Held no less than yourselves to know the limits 
Of honour and of infamy, nor has study 
Quenched the free spirit which first ordered them ; 
And thus to me, as to one well experienced 
In the false quicksands of the sea of honour, 
You may refer the merits of the case ; 
And if I should perceive in your relation 
That either has the right to satisfaction 
From the other, I give you my word of honour 
To leave you. 

LELIO. 

Under this condition then 
I will relate the cause, and you will cede 
And must confess th' impossibility 
Of compromise ; for the same lady is 
Beloved by Floro and myself. 

FLORO. 

It seems 
Much to me that the fight of day should look 
Upon that idol of my heart — but he — 
Leave us to fight, according to thy word. 

C7PRIAN. 

Permit one question further : is the lady 
Impossible to hope or not ? 

LELIO. 

She is 
So excellent, that if the light of day 
Should excite Floro's jealousy, it were 
Without just cause, for even the light of day 
Trembles to gaze on her. 



Part marry her ? 



And you ? 



CYPRIAN. 

Would you for your 



FLORO. 

Such is my confidence. 



LELIO. 

O, would that I could lift my hope 
So high • for though she is extremely poor, 
Her virtue is her dowry. 



CTFBIAM. 

And if you both 
Would marry her, is it not weak and vain, 
Culpable and unworthy, thus beforehand 
To slur her honour ? What would the world My 
If one should slay the other, and if she 
Should afterwards espouse the murderer ? 

[The rivals agree to refer their quarrel to Cyprian ; 
irho in consequence visits Justina, anil becomes 
enamoured of her: shedisdains him, and he retires 
to a solitary sea-shore. 



SCENE II. 

CYPR1AS. 

O memory ! permit it not 

That the tyrant of my thought 

Be another soul that still 

Holds dominion o'er the will ; 

That would refuse, but can no more, 

To bend, to tremble, and adore. 

Vain idolatry ! — I saw, 

And gazing became blind with error ; 

Weak ambition, which the awe 

Of her presence bound to terror ! 

So beautiful she was — and I, 

Between my love and jealousy, 

Am so convulsed with hope and fear, 

Unworthy as it may appear ; — 

So bitter is the life I live, 

That, hear me, Hell ! I now would give 

To thy most detested spirit 

My soul, for ever to inherit, 

To suffer punishment and pine, 

So this woman may be mine. 

Hear'st thou, Hell ! dost thou reject it? 

My soul is offered ! 

D.EMON {unseen). 

I accept it. 
[Tempest, with thunder and lightning. 

CYPRIAN. 
What is this ! ye heavens, for ever pure, 
At once intensely radiant and obscure ! 

Athwart the ethereal halls 
The lightning's arrow and the thunder-balls 
The day affright. 
As from the horizon round, 
Burst with earthquake sound, 
In mighty torrents the electric fountains ; — 
Clouds quench the sun, and thunder smoke 
Strangles the air, and fire eclipses heaven. 
I Philosophy, thou canst not even 
I Compel their causes underneath thy yoke, 
! From yonder clouds even to the waves below 
I The fragments of a single ruin choke 
Imagination's flight ; 
For, on flakes of surge, like feathers light, 
The ashes of the desolation cast 

Upon the gloomy blast, 
Tell of the footsteps of the storm. 
And nearer see the melancholy form 
Of a great ship, the outcast of the sea, 

Drives miserably ! 
And it must fly the pity of the port, 
Or perish, and its last and sole resort 
Is its own raging enemy. 






86 1 



TRANSLATIONS. 



The terror of the thrilling cry 
Was a Fatal prophecy 
Of coming death, who hovers now 
Upon that shattered prow, 
That they who the not may be dying still. 
And not alone the insane elements 
Are populous with wild portents, 
But that sail ship is as a miracle 
Of sadden ruin, for it drives so fast 
It seems as if it had arrayed its form 
With the headlong storm. 
It strikes — I almost feel the shock, — 
It stumbles on a jagged rock, — 
Sparkles of blood on the white foam are cast. 
A tan pent — All exclaim within 
We are all lost ! 

daemon (within). 
Now from this plank will I 
Pass to the land, and thus fulfil my scheme. 

CYPRIAN. 

As in contempt of the elemental rage 

A man comes forth in safety, while the ship's 

Great form is in a watery eclipse 

Obliterated from the Ocean's page, 

And round its wreck the huge sea-monsters sit, 

A horrid conclave, and the whistling wave 

Is heaped over its carcase, like a grave. 

The Daemon enters as escaped from the sea. 
d.emon (aside). 
It was essential to my purposes 
To wake a tumult on the sapphire ocean, 
That in this unknown form I might at length 
Wipe out the blot of the discomfiture 
Sustained upon the mountain, and assail 
With a new war the soul of Cyprian, 
Forging the instruments of his destruction 
Even from his love and from his wisdom. — 
Beloved earth, dear mother, in thy bosom 
I seek a refuge from the monster who 
Precipitates itself upon me. 

CYPRIAN. 

Friend, 
Collect thyself; and be the memory 
Of thy late suffering, and thy greatest sorrow 
But as a shadow of the past, — for nothing 
Beneath the circle of the moon but flows 
And changes, and can never know repose. 

DJEMON. 

And who art thou, before whose feet my fate 
Has prostrated me ? 

CYPRIAN. 

One who, moved with pity, 
Would soothe its stings. 

DJEMON. 

Oh ! , that can never be ! 
No solace can my lasting sorrows find. 



CYPRIAN. 



Wherefore ? 



DAEMON. 

Because my happiness is lost. 
Yet I lament what has long ceased to be 
The object of desire or memory, 
And my life is not life. 



CYPRIAN. 

Now, since the fury 
Of this earthquaking hurricane is still, 
And the crystalline heaven has rcassumed 
Its windless calm so quickly, that it seems 
As if its heavy wrath had been awakened 
Only to overwhelm that vessel, — speak, 
Who art thou, and whence comest thou ? 

DiEMON. 

Far more 
My coming hither cost than thou hast seen, 
Or I can tell. Among my misadventures 
This shipwreck is the least. Wilt thou hear? 



Speak. 

D^MON. 

Since thou desirest, I will then unveil 

Myself to thee ; — for in myself I am 

A world of happiness and misery ; 

This I have lost, and that I must lament 

For ever. In my attributes I stood 

So high and so heroically great, 

In lineage so supreme, and with a genius 

Which penetrated with a glance the world 

Beneath my feet, that won by my high merit 

A king — whom I may call the King of kings, 

Because all others tremble in their pride 

Before the terrors of his countenance, 

In his high palace roofed with brightest gems 

Of living light — call them the stars of Heaven — 

Named me his counsellor. But the high praise 

Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose 

In mighty competition, to ascend 

His seat, and place my foot triumphantly 

Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know 

The depth to which ambition falls ; too mad 

Was the attempt, and yet more mad were now 

Repentance of the irrevocable deed : — 

Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory 

Of not to be subdued, before the shame 

Of reconciling me with him who reigns 

By coward cession. — Nor was I alone, 

Nor am I now, nor shall I be alone ; 

And there was hope, and there may still be hope, 

For many suffrages among his vassals 

Hailed me their lord and king, and many still 

Are mine, and many more perchance shall be. 

Thus vanquished, though in fact victorious, 

I left his seat of empire, from mine eye 

Shooting forth poisonous lightning, while my words 

With inauspicious thunderings shook Heaven, 

Proclaiming vengeance, public as my wrong, 

And imprecating on his prostrate slaves 

Rapine and death, and outrage. Then I sailed 

Over the mighty fabric of the world, 

A pirate ambushed in its pathless sands, 

A lynx crouched watchfully among its caves 

And craggy shores ; and I have wandered over 

The expanse of these wide wildernesses 

In this great ship, whose bulk is now dissolved 

In the light breathings of the invisible wind, 

And which the sea has made a dustless ruin, 

Seeking ever a mountain, through whose forests 

I seek a man, whom I must now compel 

To keep his word with me. I came arrayed 

In tempest, and, although my power could well 

Bridle the forest winds in their career, 



SCENES FROM CALDERON. 



355 



For other causes I forbore to soothe 

Their fury to Favonian gentleness ; 

I could and would not : (thus I wake in him [Aside 

A love of magic art.) Let not this tempest, 

Nor the succeeding calm excite thy wonder ; 

For by my art the sun would turn as pale 

As his weak sister with unwonted fear ; 

And in my wisdom are the orbs of Heaven 

Written as in a record. I have pierced 

The flaming circles of their wondrous spheres, 

And know them as thou knowest every corner 

Of this dim spot. Let it not seem to thee 

That I boast vainly ; wouldst thou that I work 

A charm over this waste and savage wood, 

This Babylon of crags and aged trees, 

Filling its leafy coverts with a horror 

Thrilling and strange ? I am the friendless guest 

Of these wild oaks and pines — and as from thee 

I have received the hospitality 

Of this rude place, I offer thee the fruit 

Of years of toil in recompense ; whate'er 

Thy wildest dream presented to thy thought 

As object of desire, that shall be thine. 



And thenceforth shall so firm an amity 
'Twixt thou and me be, that neither fortune, 
The monstrous phantom which pursues success, 
That careful miser, that free prodigal, 
Who ever alternates with changeful hand 
Evil and good, reproach and fame ; nor Time, 
That loadstar of the ages, to whose beam 
The winged years speed o'er the intervals 
Of their unequal revolutions ; nor 
Heaven itself, whose beautiful bright stars 
Rule and adorn the world, can ever make 
The least division between thee and me, 
Since now I find a refuge in thy favour. 



SCENE III. 

The Daemon tempts Justina, ivho is a Christian. 
D^MON. 

Abyss of Hell ! I call on thee, 

Thou wild misrule of thine own anarchy ! 

From thy prison-house set free 

The spirits of voluptuous death, 

That with their mighty breath 

They may destroy a world of virgin thoughts ; 

Let her chaste mind with fancies thick as motes 

Be peopled from thy shadowy deep, 

Till her guiltless phantasy 

Full to overflowing be ! 

And, with sweetest harmony, 

Let birds, and flowers, and leaves, and all things move 

To love, only to love. 

Let nothing meet her eyes 

But signs of Love's soft victories ; 

Let nothing meet her ear 

But sounds of Love's sweet sorrow ; 

So that from faith no succour may she borrow, 

But, guided by my spirit blind 

And in a magic snare entwined, 

She may now seek Cyprian. 

Begin, while I in silence bind 

My voice, when thy sweet song thou hast begun. 



A VOICE WITHIN. 

What is the glory far above 
All else in human life ? 

ALL. 

Love ! love ! 

[ While these words are sung, the Djemon goes out «t 
one door, and Justina enters at another. 

THE FIRST VOICE. 

There is no form in which the fire 
Of love its traces has impressed not. 
Man lives far more in love's desire 
Than by life's breath soon possessed not. 
If all that lives must love or die, 
All shapes on earth, or sea, or sky, 
With one consent to Heaven cry 
That the glory far above 
All else in life is — 

ALL. 

Love ! O love ! 

JUSTINA. 

Thou melancholy thought, which art 
So fluttering and so sweet, to thee 
When did I give the liberty 
Thus to afflict my heart \ 
What is the cause of this new power 
Which doth my fevered being move, 
Momently raging more and more ? 
W T hat subtle pain is kindled now 
Which from my heart doth overflow 
Into my senses ? — 

ALL. 

Love, love ! 

JUSTINA. 

'Tis that enamoured nightingale 

Who gives me the reply : 

He ever tells the same soft tale 

Of passion and of constancy 

To his mate, who, rapt and fond, 

Listening sits, a bough beyond. 

Be silent, Nightingale ! — No more 

Make me think, in hearing thee 

Thus tenderly thy love deplore, 

If a bird can feel his so, 

What a man would feel for me. 

And, voluptuous vine, thou 

Who seekest most when least pursuing, — 

To the trunk thou interlacest 

Art the verdure which embracest, 

And the weight which is its ruin, — 

No more, with green embraces, vine, 

Make me think on what thou lovest, — 

For whilst thou thus thy boughs entwine, 

I fear lest thou shouldst teach me, sophist, 

How arms might be entangled too 

Light-enchanted sunflower, thou 
Who gazest ever true and tender 
On the sun's revolving splendour, 
Follow not his faithless glance 
With thy faded countenance, 
Nor teach my beating heart to fear, 
If leaves can mourn without a tear, 
How eyes must weep ! Nightingale, 
Cease from thy enamoured tale,— 

A A 2 



356 



TRANSLATIONS. 



Leafy vino, unwivath thy bower, 
Restless sunflower, eease to move, — 
Or tell me all, what poisonous power 
Ye use against me. — 

ALL. 

Love ! love ! love ! 

JUSTINA. 

It cannot be ! Whom have I ever loved ! 
Trophies of my oblivion and disdain, 
Floro and Lelio did I not reject? 
And Cyprian ? — 

[She becomes troubled at the name of Cyprian. 
Did I not requite him 
With such severity, that he has fled 
Where none has ever heard of him again? — 
Alas ! I now begin to fear that this 
May be the occasion whence desire grows bold, 
As if there were no danger. From the moment 
That I pronounced to my own listening heart, 
Cyprian is absent, miserable me ! 
I know not what I feel ! [More calmly. 

It must be pity 
To think that such a man, whom all the world 
Admired, should be forgot by all the world, 
And I the cause. [She again becomes troubled. 

And yet if it were pity, 
Floro and Lelio might have equal share, 
For they are both imprisoned for my sake. [Calmly. 
Alas ! what reasonings are these ? It is 
Enough I pity him, and that, in vain, 
Without this ceremonious subtlety. 
And woe is me ! I know not where to find him now, 
Even should I seek him through this wide world. 

Enter D-emon. 
d^sion. 
Follow, and I will lead thee where he is. 

JUSTINA. 

And who art thou, who hast found entrance hither, 
Into my chamber through the doors and locks ? 
Art thou a monstrous shadow which my madness 
Has formed in the idle air ? 

DiEMON. 

No. I am one 
Called by the thought which tyrannises thee 
From his eternal dwelling ; who this day 
Is pledged to bear thee unto Cyprian. 

JUSTINA. 

So shall thy promise fail. This agony 
Of passion which afflicts my heart and soul 
May sweep imagination in its storm ; 
The will is firm. 

DAEMON. 

Already half is done 
In the imagination of an act. 
The sin incurred, the pleasure then remains ; 
Let not the will stop half way on the road. 

JUSTINA. 

1 will not be discouraged, nor despair, 
Although I thought it, and although 'tis true 
That thought is but a prelude to the deed : — 
Thought is not in my power, but action is : 
I will not move my foot to follow thee. 



DAEMON. 

But a far mightier wisdom than thine own 
Exerts itself within thee, with such power 
Compelling thee to that which it inclines 
That it shall force thy step ; how wilt thou then 
Resist, Justina ? 

JUSTINA. 

By my free-will. 

DiEMON. 

I 
Must force thy will. 

JUSTINA. 

It is invincible ; 
It were not free if thou hadst power upon it. 

[He draws, but cannot move her. 
DAEMON. 

Come, where a pleasure waits thee. 

JUSTINA. 

It were bought 
Too dear. 

DAEMON. 

'Twill soothe thy heart to softest peace. 

JUSTINA. 

'Tis dread captivity. 

DiEMON. 

'Tis joy, 'tis glory. " 

JUSTINA, 

'Tis shame, 'tis torment, 'tis despair. 

DAEMON. 

But how 
Canst thou defend thyself from that or me, 
If my power drags thee onward ? 

JUSTINA. 

My defence 
Consists in God. 

[He vainly endeavours to force her, and at last 
releases her. 

D.EMON. 

Woman, thou hast subdued me, 
Only by not owning thyself subdued. 
But since thou thus findest defence in God, 
I will assume a feigned form, and thus 
Make thee a victim of my baffled rage. 
For I will mask a spirit in thy form 
Who will betray thy name to infamy, 
And doubly shall I triumph in thy loss, 
First by dishonouring thee, and then by turning 
False pleasure to true ignominy. [Exit. 



I 

Appeal to Heaven against thee ! so that Heaven 
May scatter thy delusions, and the blot 
Upon my fame vanish in idle thought, 
Even as flame dies in the envious air, 
And as the flow'ret wanes at morning frost, 

And thou shouldst never But, alas ! to whom 

Do I still speak ? — Did not a man but now 
Stand here before me ? — No, I am alone, 
And yet I saw him. Is he gone so quickly ? 
Or can the heated mind engender shapes 
From its own fear? Some terrible and strange 
Peril is near. Lisander ! father ! lord ! 
Livia ! — 



SCENES FROM CALDERON. 



357 



Enter Lisander and Livia. 
LISANDER. 

my daughter ; what ? 



What? 

JUSTINA. 

Saw you 
A man go forth from my apartment now ? — 
T scarce sustain myself ! 

LISANDER. 

A man here ! 

JUSTINA. 

Have you not seen him ? 



No, lady. 



I saw him. 



LISANDER. 

'Tis impossible ; the doors 
Which led to this apartment were all locked. 

livia (aside). 
I dare say it was Moscon whom she saw, 
For he was locked up hi my room. 

LISANDER. 

It must 
Have been some image of thy phantasy. 
Such melancholy as thou feedest is 
Skilful in forming such in the vain air 
Out of the motes and atoms of the dav 



LIVIA. 

My master 's in the right. 

JUSTINA. 

Oh, would it were 
Delusion ! but I fear some greater ill. 
I feel as if out of my bleeding bosom 
My heart was torn in fragments ; aye, 
Some mortal spell is wrought against my frame ; 
So potent was the charm, that had not God 
Shielded my humble innocence from wrong, 
I should have sought my sorrow and my shame 
With willing steps. — Livia, quick, bring my cloak, 
For I must seek refuge from these extremes 
Even in the temple of the highest God 
Which secretly the faithful worship. 



Here. 

justina (putting on her cloak). 
In this, as in a shroud of snow, may I 
Quench the consuming fire in which I burn, 
Wasting away ! 

LISANDER. 

And I will go with thee. 

LIVIA. 

When I once see them safe out of the hous«. 
I shall breathe freely. 

JUSTINA. 

So do I confide 
In thy just favour, Heaven ! 



LISANDER. 



Let us go. 



JUSTINA. 

Thine is the cause, great God ! Turn, for my sake 
And for thine own, mercifully to me ! 






368 THANSLATIONS. 


SCENES 


FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE. 


PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN. 


Enter Mephistopheles. 


The Lord and the Host of Heaven. 


MEPHISTOPHELES. 




As thou, Lord, once more art kind enough 


Enter Three Archangels. 


To interest thyself in our affairs — 


RAPHAEL. 


And ask, u How goes it with you there below?" 


The sun makes music as of old 


And as indulgently at other times 


Amid the rival spheres of Heaven, 
On its predestined circle rolled 

With thunder speed : the Angels even 
Draw strength from gazing on its glance, 

Though none its meaning fathom may ; — 
The world's unwithered countenance 


Thou tookedst not my visits in ill part, 


Thou seestme here once more among thy household. 
Though I should scandalize this company, 


You will excuse me if I do not talk 

In the high style which they think fashionable ; 


My pathos certainly would make you laugh too, 


Is bright as at creation's day. 


Had you not long since given over laughing. 
Nothing know I to say of suns and worlds ; 


GABRIEL. 

And swift and swift, with rapid lightness, 
The adorned Earth spins silently, 

Alternating Elysian brightness 

"With deep and dreadful night ; the sea 

Foams in broad billows from the deep 
Up to the rocks ; and rocks and ocean, 

Onward, with spheres which never sleep, 


I observe only how men plague themselves ; — 


The little god o' the world keeps the same stamp, 
As wonderful as on creation's day : — 
A little better would he live, hadst thou 


Not given him a glimpse of Heaven's light 
Which he calls reason, and employs it only 
To live more beastily than any beast. 


GAERIEL. 


Are hurried in eternal motion. 


And swift, and inconceivably swift 




The adornment of earth winds itself round, 


MICHAEL. 


And exchanges Paradise-clearness 


And tempests in contention roar 

From land to sea, from sea to land ; 
And, raging, weave a chain of power 


With deep dreadful night. 

The sea foams in broad waves 

From its deep bottom up to the rocks, 


And rocks and sea are torn on together 


Which girds the earth as with a band. 


In the eternal swift course of the spheres. 


A flashing desolation there 




Flames before the thunder's way ; 


MICHAEL. 

And storms roar in emulation 


But thy servants, Lord, revere 


From sea to land, from land to sea, 


The gentle changes of thy day. 


And make, raging, a chain 




Of deepest operation round about. 


CHORUS OF THE THREE. 


There flames a flashing destruction 


The Angels draw strength from thy glance, 


Before the path of the thunderbolt. 


Though no one comprehend thee may : — 
Thy world's unwithered countenance 


But thy servants, Lord, revere 
The gentle alternations of thy day. 


Is bright as on creation's day.* 


CHORUS. 


Thy countenance gives the Angels strength. 


* RAPHAEL. 


Though none can comprehend thee : 


The sun sounds, according to ancient custom, 
In the song of emulation of his brother-spheres, 


And all thy lofty works 

Are excellent as at the first day. 


And its fore-written circle 


Such is the literal translation of this astonisning Chorus ; 


Fulfils with a step of thunder. 


it is impossible to represent in another language the melody 


Its countenance gives the Angels strength, 


of the versification ; even the volatile strength and delicacy 


Though no one can fathom it. 


of the ideas escape in the crucible of translation, and the 


The incredible high works 


reader is surprised to find a caput mortuum. — Author's 


Are excellent as at the first day. 


Note. 



SCENES FROM FAUST. 



350 



With reverence to your Lordship be it spoken, 
He's like one of those long-legged grasshoppers 
Who flits and jumps about, and sings for ever 
The same old song i' the grass. There let him lie, 
Burying his nose in every heap of dung. 

THE LOUD. 

Have you no more to say ? Do you come here 
Always to scold, aud cavil, and complain ? 
Seems nothing ever right to you on earth ? 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

No, Lord ; I find all there, as ever, bad at best. 
Even I am sorry for man's days of sorrow •, 
I could myself almost give up the pleasure 
Of plaguing the poor things. 

THE LORD. 

Knowest thou Faust ? 



The Doctor ! 



MEPHISTOPHELES. 
THE LORD. 

Ay ; my servant Faust. 



MEPHISTOPHELES. 

In truth 
He serves you in a fashion quite his own, 
And the fool's meat and drink are not of earth. 
His aspirations bear him on so far 
That he is half aware of his own folly, 
For he demands from Heaven its fairest star, 
And from the earth the highest joy it bears ; 
Yet all things far, and all things near, are vain 
To calm the deep emotions of his breast. 

THE LORD. 

Though he now serves me in a cloud of error, 
I will soon lead him forth to the clear day. 
When trees look green, full well the gardener knows 
That fruits and blooms will deck the coming year. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

What will you bet ? — now I am sure of winning — 
Only observe you give me full permission 
To lead him softly on my path. 

THE LORD. 

As long 
As he shall live upon the earth, so long 
Is nothing unto thee forbidden. — Man 
Must err till he has ceased to struggle. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Thanks. 
And that is all I ask ; for willingly 
I never make acquaintance with the dead. 
The full fresh cheeks of youth are food for me, 
And if a corpse knocks, I am not at home. 
For I am like a cat — I like to play 
A little with the mouse before I eat it. 

THE LORD. 

Well, well, it is permitted thee. Draw thou 
His spirit from its springs ; as thou find'st power, 
Seize him and lead him on thy downward path ; 
And stand ashamed when failure teaches thee 
That a good man, even in his darkest longings, 
Is well aware of the right way. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Well and good. 
I am not in much doubt about mv bet, 



And, if I lose, then 'tis your turn to crow ; 
Enjoy your triumph then with a full breast. 
Ay ; dust shall he devour, and that with pleasure, 
Like my old paramour, the famous Snake. 

THE LORD. 

Pray come here when it suits you ; for I never 
Had much dislike for people of your sort. 
And, among all the Spirits who rebelled, 
The knave was ever the least tedious to me. 
The active spirit of man soon sleeps, and soon 
He seeks unbroken quiet ; therefore I 
Have given him the Devil for a companion, 
Who may provoke him to some sort of work, 
And must create for ever. — But ye, pure 
Children of God, enjoy eternal beauty ; — 
Let that which ever operates and lives 
Clasp you within the limits of its love ; 
And seize with sweet and melancholy thoughts 
The floating phantoms of its loveliness. 

{Heaven closes ; the Archangels exeunt. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

From time to time I visit the old fellow, 

And I take care to keep on good terms with hirr.. 

Civil enough is this same God Almighty, 

To talk so freely with the Devil himself. 



SCENE. 

MAY-DAY NIGHT. 

The Hartz Mountain, a desolate Country. 

FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Would you not like a broomstick? As for me 

I wish I had a good stout ram to ride ; 

For we are still far from th' appointed place. 

FAUST. 

This knotted staff is help enough for me, 

Whilst I feel fresh upon my legs. What good 

Is there in making short a pleasant way ? 

To creep along the labyrinths of the vales, 

And climb those rocks, where ever-babbling springs 

Precipitate themselves in waterfalls, 

In the true sport that seasons such a path. 

Already Spring kindles the birchen spray, 

And the hoar pines already feel her breath : 

Shall she not work also within our limbs ? 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Nothing of such an influence do I feel. 

My body is all wintry, and I wish 

The flowers upon our path were frost and snow. 

But see, how melancholy rises now, 

Dimly uplifting her belated beam, 

The blank unwelcome round of the red moon, 

And gives so bad a light, that every step 

One stumbles 'gainst some crag. With your permis- 

I'll call an Ignis-fatuus to our aid : [sion 

I see one yonder burning jollily. 

Halloo, my friend ! may I request that you 

Would favour us with your bright company ! 

Why should you blaze away there to no purpose i 

Pray be so good as light us up this way. 



360 



TRANSLATIONS. 



n;Nis-i\vTUUS. 
With reverence be it Bpoken, I ^ ill try 
To overoome the lightness of my nature ; 

Our course, you know, is generally zig-zag. 

Mr.nilSTOPHF.LES. 
I la, ha ! your worship thinks you have to deal 
With men. Go straight on in the Devil's name, 
Or I shall puff your flickering life out. 



IGNIS-FATUUS. 



Well, 



I see you are the master of the house ; 

I will accommodate myself to you. 

Only consider that to-night this mountain 

Is all-enchanted, and if Jack-a-lantern 

Shows you his way, though you should miss your own, 

You ought not to be too exact with him. 

Faust, Mephistopheles, and Ignis-fatuus in alternate 
Chorus. 
The limits of the sphere of dream, 

The bounds of true and false, are past. 
Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam, 

Lead us onward, far and fast, 

To the wide, the desert waste. 
But see, how swift advance and shift 

Trees behind trees, row by row, — 
How, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift 

Their frowning foreheads as we go. 

The giant-snouted crags, ho ! ho ! 

How they snort, and how they blow ! 

Through the mossy sods and stones, 
Stream and streamlet hurry down, 
A rushing throng ! A sound of song 
Beneath the vault of Heaven is blown ! 
Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones 
Of this bright day, sent down to say 
That Paradise on Earth is known, 
Resound around, beneath, above ; 
All we hope and all we love 
Finds a voice in this blithe strain, 
Which wakens hill and wood and rill, 
And vibrates far o'er field and vale, 
And which Echo, like the tale 
Of old times, repeats again. 

To-whoo ! to-whoo ! near, nearer now 

The sound of song, the rushing throng ! 

Are the screech, the lapwing, and the jay, 

All awake as if 'twere day ? 

See, with long legs and belly wide, 

A salamander in the brake ! 

Every root is like a snake, 

And along the loose hill side, 

With strange contortions through the night, 

Curls, to seize or to affright ; 

And animated, strong, and many, 

They dart forth polypus-antennae, 

To blister with their poison spume 

The wanderer. Through the dazzling gloom 

The many-coloured mice that thread 

The dewy turf beneath our tread, 

In troops each other's motions cross, 

Through the heath and through the moss; 

And in legions intertangled, 

The fire-flies flit, and swarm, and throng, 

Till all the mountain depths are spangled. 



Tell me, shall we go or stay? 
Shall we onward ? Come along ! 
Everything around is Bwept 
Forward, onward, far away ! 
Trees and masses intercept 
The sight, and wisps on every side 
Are puffed up and multiplied. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Now vigorously seize 'my skirt, and gain 
This pinnacle of isolated crag. 
One may observe with wonder from this point 
How Mammon glows among the mountains. 



Ay- 

And strangely through the solid depth below 
A melancholy light, like the red dawn, 
Shoots from the lowest gorge of the abyss 
Of mountains, lighting hitherward ; there, rise 
Pillars of smoke ; here, clouds float gently by ; 
Here the light burns soft as the enkindled air, 
Or the illumined dust of golden flowers ; 
And now it glides like tender colours spreading ; 
And now bursts forth in fountains from the 

earth ; 
And now it winds one torremt of broad light, 
Through the far valley with a hundred veins ; 
And now once more within that narrow corner 
Masses itself into intensest splendour. 
And near us see sparks spring out of the ground, 
Like golden sand scattered upon the darkness ; 
The pinnacles of that black wall of mountains 
That hems us in are kindled. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Rare, in faith ! 
Does not Sir Mammon gloriously illuminate 
His palace for this festival — it is 
A pleasure which you had not known before. 
I spy the boisterous guests already. 



How 
The children of the wind rage in the air ! 
With what fierce strokes they fall upon my neck ! 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag. 
Beware ! for if with them thou warrest 
In their fierce flight towards the wilderness, 
Their breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag 
Thy body to a grave in the abyss. 

A cloud thickens the night 
Hark! how the tempest crashes through the forest! 

The owls fly out in strange affright ; 
The columns of the evergreen palaces 

Are split and shattered ; 

The roots creak, and stretch, and groan ; 

And ruinously overthrown, 

The trunks are crushed and shattered 

By the fierce blast's unconquerable stress. 

Over each other crack and crash they all 

In terrible and intertangled fall ; 

And through the ruins of the shaken mountain 
The airs hiss and howl — 

It is not the voice of the fountain, 
Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl. 



SCENES FROM FAUST. 



:m 



Dost thou not hear ? 

Strange accents are ringing 
Aloft, afar, anear ; 

The witches are singing ! 
The torrent of a raging wizard's song 
Streams the whole mountain along. 

CHORUS OF WITCHES. 

The stubble is yellow, the corn is green, 
Now to the Brocken the witches go ; 
The mighty multitude here may be seen 
Gathering, wizard and witch, below. 
Sir Urean is sitting aloft in the air ; 
Hey over stock ! and hey over stone ! 
'Twixt witches and incubi, what shall be done ? 
Tell it who dare ! tell it who dare ! 

A VOICE. 

Upon a sow-swine, whose farrows were nine, 
Old Baubo rideth alone. 



Honour her to whom honour is due, 

Old mother Baubo, honour to you ! 

An able sow with old Baubo upon her, 

Is worthy of glory, and worthy of honour ! 

The legion of witches is coming behind, 

Darkening the night and outspeeding the wind — 

A VOICE. 

Which way comest thou ? 

A VOICE. 

Over Ilsenstein ; 
The owl was awake in the white moon-shine ; 
I saw her at rest in her downy nest, 
And she stared at me with her broad bright eyne. 

VOICES. 

And you may now as well take your course on to 

Hell, 
Since you ride by so fast on the headlong blast. 

A VOICE. 

She dropt poison upon me as I past. 
Here are the wounds — 

CHORUS OF WITCHES. 

Come away ! come along ! 
The way is wide, the way is long, 
But what is that for a Bedlam throng ? 
Stick with the prong, and scratch with the broom. 
The child in the cradle lies strangled at home, 
And the mother is clapping her hands. — 

SEMI-CHORUS OF WIZARDS I. 

We glide in 
Like snails when the women are all away ; 
And from a house once given over to sin 
Woman has a thousand steps to stray. 

SEMI-CHORUS II. 

A thousand steps must a woman take, 
Where a man but a single spring will make. 

VOICES ABOVE. 

Come with us, come with us, from Felunsee. 

VOICES BELOW. 

With what joy would we fly through the upper sly ; 
We are washed, we are 'nointed, stark naked are we I 
But our toil and our pain are for ever in vain. 



BOTH CHORUSES. 

The wind is still, the stars are fled, 
The melancholy moon is dead ; 
The magic notes, like spark on spark, 
Drizzle, whistling through the dark. 
Come away ! 

VOICES BELOW. 

Stay, oh stay ! 

VOICES ABOVE. 

Out of the crannies of the rocks 
Who calls? 

VOICES BELOW. 

Oh, let me join your flocks ! 
I, three hundred years have striven 
To catch your skirt and mount to Heaven, — 
And still in vain. Oh, might I be 
With company akin to me ! 

BOTH CHORUSES. 

Some on a ram and some on a prong, 

On poles and on broomsticks we flutter along ; 

Forlorn is the wight who can rise not to-night. 

A HALF WITCH BELOW. 

I have been tripping this many an hour : 
Are the others already so far before ? 
No quiet at home, and no peace abroad ! 
And less methinks is found by the road. 

CHORUS OF WITCHES. 

Come onward, away ! aroint thee, aroint ! 

A witch to be strong must anoint — anoint — 

Then every trough will be boat enough ; 

With a rag for a sail we can sweep through the sky, 

Who flies not to-night, when means he to fly % 

BOTH CHORUSES. 

We cling to the skirt, and we strike on the ground; 
Witch-legions thicken around and around ; 
Wizard-swarms cover the heath all over. 

[They descend. 
MEPHISTOPHELES. 

What thronging, dashing, raging, rustling ! 
What whispering, babbling, hissing, bustling ! 
What glimmering, spurting, stinking, burning ! 
As Heaven and earth were overturning. 
There is a true witch element about us ; 
Take hold on me, or we shall be divided : — 
Where are you ? 

faust (from a distance). 
Here! 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

What ! 
I must exert my authority in the house. 
Place for young Voland ! Pray make way, good 

people. 
Take hold on me, doctor, and with one step 
Let us escape from this unpleasant crowd : 
They are too mad for people of my sort. 
Just there shines a peculiar kind of light — 
Something attracts me in those bushes. — Come 
This way ; we shall slip down there in a minute. 

FAUST. 

Spirit of Contradiction ! Well, lead on — 
'Twere a wise feat indeed to wander out 
Into the Brocken upon May-day night, 
And then to isolate oneself in scorn, 
Disgusted with the humours of the time 



:u\-2 



TRANSLATIONS. 



KKPHISTOPHSl is. 

See yonder, round ■ many-coloured flame 
A merry-club is huddled all together: 
Even with such little people as sit there 
One would not be alone. 



FAUST. 

Would that I wore 
CTp yonder in the glow and whirling smoke 
Where the blind million rush impetuously 
To meet the evil ones ; there might I solve 
Many a riddle that torments me ! 



MKPIIISTOPHELES. 



Yet 



Many a riddle there is tied anew 

I nextricably. Let the great world rage ! 

We will stay here safe in the quiet dwellings. 

'Tis an old custom. Men have ever built 

Their own small world in the great world of all. 

I see young witches naked there, and old ones 

Wisely attired with greater decency. 

Be guided now by me, and you shall buy 

A pound of pleasure with a dram of trouble. 

I hear them tune their instruments — one must 

Get used to this damned scraping. Come, I'll 

lead you 
Among them ; and what there you do and see, 
As a fresh compact 'twixt us two shall be. 

How say you now ? this space is wide enough — 
Look forth, you cannot see the end of it — 
A hundred bonfii'es burn in rows, and they 
Who throng around them seem innumerable : 
Dancing and drinking, jabbering, making love, 
And cooking, are at work. Now tell me, friend, 
What is there better in the world than this ? 



In introducing us, do you assume 
The character of wizard or of devil ? 



MEPHISTOPHELES. 

In truth, I generally go about 
In strict incognito ; and yet one likes 
To wear one's orders upon gala days. 
I have no ribbon at my knee ; but here 
At home the cloven foot is honourable. 
See you that snail there 1 — she comes creeping up, 
And with her feeling eyes hath smelt out some- 
thing : 
I could not, if I would, mask myself here. 
Come now we'll go about from fire to fire : 
I'll be the pimp, and you shall be the lover. 

[To some old Women, who are sitting round a heap 
of glimmering coals. 
Old gentlewomen, what do you do out here ? 
You ought to be with the young rioters 
Right in the thickest of the revelry — 
But every one is best content at home. 

GENERAL. 

Who dare confide in right or a just claim % 
So much as I had done for them ! and now — 

With women and the people 'tis the same, 
Youth will stand foremost ever, — age may go 

To the dark grave unhonoured. 



MINISTER. 

Now-a-days 
People assert their rights ; they go too far ; 

But, as for me, the good old times I praise. 
Then we were all in ail ; 'twas something worth 

One's while to be in place and wear a star ; 
That was indeed the golden age on earth. 

parvenu *. 
We too are active, and we did and do 
What we ought not perhaps ; and yet we now 
Will seize, whilst all things are whirled round and 

round, 
A spoke of Fortune's wheel, and keep our ground. 

AUTHOR. 

Who now can taste a treatise of deep sense 
And ponderous volume ? 'Tis impertinence 
To write what none will x*ead, therefore will I 
To please the young and thoughtless people try. 

mephistopheles. ( Who at once appears to have 

grown very old.) 
I find the people ripe for the last day, 
Since I last came up to the wizard mountain ; 
And as my little cask runs turbid now, 
So is the world drained to the dregs. 

PEDLAR-WITCH. 

Look here, 
Gentlemen ; do not hurry on so fast, 
And lose the chance of a good pennyworth. 
I have a pack full of the choicest wares 
Of every sort, and yet in all my bundle 
Is nothing like what may be found on earth ; 
Nothing that in a moment will make rich 
Men and the world with fine malicious mischief. — 
There is no dagger drunk with blood ; no bowl 
From which consuming poison may be drained 
By innocent and healthy lips ; no jewel, 
The price of an abandoned maiden's shame ; 
No sword which cuts the bond it cannot loose, 
Or stabs the wearer's enemy in the back ; 
No 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Gossip, you know little of these times. 
What has been, has been ; what is done, is past. 
They shape themselves into the innovations 
They breed, and innovation drags us with it. 
The torrent of the crowd sweeps over us ; 
You think to impel, and are yourself impelled. 



Who is that yonder ? 



MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Mark her well. 



Itu 



Lilith. 



Who? 



MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Lilith, the first wife of Adam. 

Beware of her fair hair, for she excels 

All women in the magic of her locks ; 

And when she winds them round a young man's 

neck, 
She will not ever set him free again. 

* A sort of fundholder. 



SCENES FROM FAUST. 



363 



FAUST. 

There sit a girl and an old woman — they 
Seem to be tired with pleasure and with play. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

There is no rest to-night for any one : 
When one dance ends another is begun ; 
Come, let us to it. We shall have rare fun. 

[Faust dances and rings with a Girl, and MEPmsTO- 
pheles with an old Woman. 

PROCTO-PHANTASMIST. 

What is this cursed multitude about ? 

Have we not long since proved to demonstration 

That ghosts move not on ordinary feet ! 

But these are dancing just like men and women. 

THE GIRL. 

What does he want then at our ball ? 

FAUST. 

Oh ! he 
Is far above us all in his conceit : 
Whilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment ; 
And any step which in our dance we tread, 
If it be left out of his reckoning, 
Is not to be considered as a step. 
There are few things that scandalise him not ; 
And, when you whirl round in the circle now, 
As he went round the wheel in his old mill, 
He says that you go wrong in all respects, 
Especially if you congratulate him 
Upon the strength of the resemblance. 



PROCTO-PHANTASMIST. 



Fly 



Vanish ! Unheard-of impudence ! What, still there ! 
In this enlightened age too, since you have been 
Proved not to exist ! — But this infernal brood 
Will hear no reason and endure no rule. 
Are we so wise, and is the pond still haunted ? 
How long have I been sweeping out this rubbish 
Of superstition, and the world will not 
Come clean with all my pains ! — it is a case 
Unheard of ! 

THE GIRL. 

Then leave off teasing us so. 

PROCTO-PHANTASMIST. 

I tell you, spirits, to your faces now, 
That I should not regret this despotism 
Of spirits, but that mine can wield it not. 
To-night I shall make poor work of it, 
Yet I will take a round with you, and hope 
Before my last step in the living dance 
To beat the poet and the devil together. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

At last he will sit down in some foul puddle ; 
That is his way of solacing himself ; 
Uutil some leech, diverted with his gravity, 
Cures him of spirits and the spirit together. 

[To Faust, who has seceded from the dance. 
Why do you let that fair girl pass from you, 
Who sang so sweetly to you in the dance ? 



FAUST. 

A red mouse in the middle of her singing 
Sprang from her mouth. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

That was all right, my friend 
Be it enough that the mouse was not grey. 
Do not disturb your hour of happiness 
With close consideration of such trifles. 



Then saw I- 



MEPHISTOPHELES. 

What ? 



Seest thou not a pak 
Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away ? 
She drags herself now forward with slow steps, 
And seems as if she moved with shackled ieei : 
I cannot overcome the thought that she 
Is like poor Margaret. 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Let it be — pass on — 
No good can come of it — it is not well 
To meet it — it is an enchanted phantom, 
A lifeless idol ; with its numbing look, 
It freezes up the blood of man ; and they 
Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone, 
Like those who saw Medusa. 



FAUST. 

0, too true ! 
Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse 
Which no beloved hand has closed. Alas ! 
That is the breast which Margaret yielded to 
Those are the lovely limbs which I enjoyed ! 

MEPHISTOPHELES. 

It is all magic, poor deluded fool ! 

She looks to every one like his first love. 

FAUST. 

what delight ! what woe ! I cannot turn 
My looks from her sweet piteous countenance. 
How strangely does a single blood-red line, 
Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife, 
Adorn her lovely neck ! 



MEPHISTOPHELES. 

Ay, she can carry 
Her head under her arm upon occasion ; 
Perseus has cut it off for her. These pleasures 
End in delusion. — Gain this rising ground, 
It is as airy here as in a [ ] 

And if I am not mightily deceived, 
I see a theatre. — What may this mean ? 

ATTENDANT. 

Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for 'tis 
The custom now to represent that number. 
'Tis written by a Dilettante, and 
The actors who perform are Dilettanti ; 
Excuse me, gentlemen ; but I must vanish. 
I am a Dilettante curtain-lifter. 



ESSAYS, 
LETTERS FROM ABROAD, 

^Translations atrti ^Fragments. 



BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



EDITED BY MKS. SHELLEY. 



" The Poet, it is true, is the son of his time ; but pity for Mm if he is its pupil, or even its favourite ! Let 
some beneficent deity snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with the milk 
of a better time ; that he may ripen to bis full stature beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to 
manhood, let him return, a foreign shape, into his century ; not however to delight it by his presence, but 
dreadful like the son of Agamemnon, to purify it."— Schiller. 



PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. 



This volume has long been due to the public ; it forms an important portion of all 
that was left by Shelley, whence those who did not know him may form a juster estimate of 
his virtues and his genius than has hitherto been done. 

We find, in the verse of a poet, " the record of the best and happiest moments of the best 
and happiest minds."* But this is not enough — we desire to know the man. We desire to 
learn how much of the sensibility and imagination that animates his poetry was founded on 
heartfelt passion, and purity, and elevation of character ; whether the pathos and the fire 
emanated from transitory inspiration and a power of weaving words touchingly ; or whether the 
poet acknowledged the might of his art in his inmost soul ; and whether his nerves thrilled to 
the touch of generous emotion. Led by such curiosity, how many volumes have been filled 
with the life of the Scottish plough-boy and the English peer ; we welcome with delight every 
fact which proves that the patriotism and tenderness expressed in the songs of Burns, sprung 
from a noble and gentle heart ; and we pore over each letter that we expect will testify that the 
melancholy and the unbridled passion that darkens Byron's verse, flowed from a soul devoured 
by a keen susceptibility to in tensest love, and indignant broodings over the injuries done and 
suffered by man. Let the lovers of Shelley's poetry — of his aspirations for a brotherhood of 
love, his tender bewailings springing from a too sensitive spirit — his sympathy with woe, his 
adoration of beauty, as expressed in his poetry ; turn to these pages to gather proof of sincerity, 
and to become acquainted with the form that such gentle sympathies and lofty aspirations work 
in private life. 

The first piece in this volume, " A Defence of Poetry," is the only entirely finished prose 
work Shelley left. In this we find the reverence with which he regarded his art. We discern 
his power of close reasoning, and the unity of his views of human nature. The language is. 
imaginative but not flowery ; the periods have an intonation full of majesty and grace ; and the 
harmony of the style being united to melodious thought, a music results, that swells upon the 
ear, and fills the mind with delight. It is a work whence a young poet, and one suffering from 
wrong or neglect, may learn to regard his pursuit and himself with that respect, without which 
his genius will get clogged in the mire of the earth : it will elevate him into those pure regions, 
where there is neither pain from the stings of insects, nor pleasure in the fruition of a gross 
appetite for praise. He will learn to rest his dearest boast on the dignity of the art he cultivates. 



* " A Defence of Poetry. 



«2 



PREFACE. 



and become aware that his best, claim on the applause of mankind, results from his being one 
more in the holy brotherhood, whose vocation it is to divest life of its material grossness and 
stooping tendencies, and to animate it with that power of turning all things to the beautiful and 
good, which is the spirit of poetry. 

The fragments* that follow form an introduction to "The Banquet" or "Symposium" 
of Plato — and that noble piece of writing follows ; which for the first time introduces the 
Athenian to the English reader in a style worthy of him. No prose author in the history of 
mankind has exerted so much influence over the world as Plato. From him the Fathers and 
commentators of early Christianity derived many of their most abstruse notions and spiritual 
ideas. His name is familial to our lips, and he is regarded even by the unlearned as the possessor 
of the highest imaginativb faculty ever displayed by man — the creator of much of the purity of 
sentiment which in another guise was adopted by the founders of chivalry — the man who 
endowed Socrates with a large portion of that reputation for wisdom and virtue, which surrounds 
him evermore with an imperishable halo of glory. 

With all this, how little is really known of Plato ! The translation we have is so harsh 
and un-English in its style, as universally to repel. There are excellent abstracts of some of 
his dialogues in a periodical publication called the "Monthly Repository;" and the mere 
English reader must feel deeply obliged to the learned translator. But these abstracts are 
defective from their very form of abridgment ; and, though I am averse to speak disparagingly 
of pages from which I have derived so much pleasure and knowledge, they want the radiance 
and delicacy of language with which the ideas are invested in the original, and are dry and stiff 
compared with the soaring poetry, the grace, subtlety, and infinite variety of Plato. They want, 
also, the dramatic vivacity, and the touch of nature, that vivifies the pages of the Athenian. 
These are all found here. Shelley commands language splendid and melodious as Plato, and 
renders faithfully the elegance and the gaiety which make the Symposium as amusing as it is 
sublime. The whole mechanism of the drama, for such in some sort it is, — the enthusiasm of 
Apollodorus, the sententiousness of Eryximachus, the wit of Aristophanes, the rapt and golden 
eloquence of Agathon, the subtle dialectics and grandeur of aim of Socrates, the drunken outbreak 
of Alcibiades, — are given with grace and animation. The picture presented reminds us of that 
talent which, in a less degree, we may suppose to have dignified the orgies of the last generation 
of free-spirited wits, — Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Curran. It has something of license, — 
too much indeed, and perforce omitted ; but of coarseness, that worst sin against our nature, it 
has nothing. 

Shelley's own definition of Love follows ; and reveals the secrets of the most impassioned, 
and yet the purest and softest heart that ever yearned for sympathy, and was ready to give its 
own, in lavish measure, in return. " The Coliseum" is a continuation to a great degree of the 
same subject. Shelley had something of the idea of a story in this. The stranger was a Greek,— 
nurtured from infancy exclusively in the literature of his progenitors, — and brought up as a child 
of Pericles might have been ; and to heighten the resemblance, Shelley conceived the idea 
of a woman, whom he named Diotima, who was his instructress and guide. In speaking of his 
plan, this was the sort of development he sketched; but no word more was written than appears 
in these pages. 

" The Assassins" was composed many years before. The style is less chaste; but it is 

* Small portioDS of these and other essays were published by Captain Medwin in a newspaper. Generally speaking, 
his extracts are incorrect and incomplete. I must except the Essay on Love, and Remarks on some of the Statues 
in the Gallery of Florence, however, as they appeared there, from the blame of these defects. 



PREFACE. 



warmed by the fire of youth. I do not know what story he had in view. The Assassins were 
known in the eleventh century as a horde of Mahometans living among the recesses of Lebanon, — 
ruled over by the Old Man of the Mountain ; under whose direction various murders were 
committed on the Crusaders, which caused the name of the people who perpetrated them to be 
adopted in all European languages, to designate the crime which gave them notoriety. Shelley's 
old favourite, the Wandering Jew, appears in the latter chapters, and, with his wild and fearful 
introduction into the domestic circle of a peaceful family of the Assassins, the fragment 
concludes. It was never touched afterwards. There is great beauty in the sketch as is 
stands ; it breathes that spirit of domestic peace and general brotherhood founded on love, 
which was developed afterwards in the " Prometheus Unbound." 

The fragment of his " Essay on the Punishment of Death " bears the value which the 
voice of a philosopher and a poet, reasoning in favour of humanity and refinement, must possess. 
It alleges all the arguments that an imaginative man, who can vividly figure the feelings of his 
fellow-creatures, can alone conceive;* and it brings them home to the calm reasoner with the 
logic of truth. In the milder season that since Shelley's time has dawned upon England, our 
legislators each day approximate nearer to his views of justice ; this piece, fragment as it is, 
may suggest to some among them motives for carrying his beneficent views into practice. 

How powerful — how almost appalling, in its vivid reality of representation, is the essay on 
" Life ! " Shelley was a disciple of the Immaterial Philosophy of Berkeley. This theory gave 
unity and grandeur to his ideas, while it opened a wide field for his imagination. The creation, 
such as it was perceived by his mind — a unit in immensity, was slight and narrow compared 
with the interminable forms of thought that might exist beyond, to be perceived perhaps 
hereafter by his own mind ; or which are perceptible to other minds that fill the universe, 
not of space in the material sense, but of infinity in the immaterial one. Such ideas are, in 
some degree, developed in his poem entitled "Heaven:" and when he makes one of the 
interlocutors exclaim, 

" Peace ! the abyss is wreathed in scorn 
Of thy presumption, atom-born," 

he expresses his despair of being able to conceive, far less express, all of variety, majesty, and 
beauty, which is veiled from our imperfect senses in the unknown realm, the mystery of which 
his poetic vision sought in vain to penetrate. 

The " Essay on a Future State " is also unhappily a fragment. Shelley observes, on one 
occasion, " a man is not a being of reason only, but of imaginations and affections." In this 
portion of his Essay he gives us only that view of a future state which is to be derived from 
reasoning and analogy. It is not to be supposed that a mind so full of vast ideas concerning the 
universe, endowed with such subtle discrimination with regard to the various modes in which 
this does or may appear to our eyes, with a lively fancy and ardent and expansive feelings, 
should be content with a mere logical view of that which even in religion is a mystery and a 
wonder. I cannot pretend to supply the deficiency, nor say what Shelley's views were — they 
were vague, certainly ; yet as certainly regarded the country beyond the grave as one by no 
means foreign to our interests and hopes. Considering his individual mind as a unit divided 
from a mighty whole, to which it was united by restless sympathies and an eager desire for 
knowledge, he assuredly believed that hereafter, as now, he would form a portion of that 

* " A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively ; he must put himself in the place of 
another and of many others ; the pains and pleasures of his species must become hia own." — A Defence of Poetry. 



I'KKL-ACE. 



whole— and a portion loss imperfect, less suffering, than the shackles inseparable from humanity 
impose on all who live beneath the moon. To me, death appears to be the gate of life ; but 
my hopes of a hereafter would be pale and drooping, did I not expect to find that most 
perfect and beloved specimen of humanity on the other shore ; and my belief is, that 
spiritual improvement in this life prepares the way to a higher existence. Traces of such 
a faith are found in several passages of Shelley's works. In one of the letters he says, 
" The destiny of man can scarcely be so degraded, that he was born only to die." And 
again, in a journal, I find these feelings recorded, with regard to a danger we incurred together 
at sea: — " I had time in that moment to reflect and even to reason on death ; it was rather a 
thing of discomfort and disappointment than terror to me. We should never be separated ; 
but in death we might not know and feel our union as now. I hope — but my hopes are not 
unmixed with fear for what will befal this inestimable spirit when we appear to die." A 
mystic ideality tinged these speculations in Shelley's mind ; certain stanzas in the poem of 
" The Sensitive Plant " express, in some degree, the almost inexpressible idea, not that we 
die into another state, when this state is no longer, from some reason, unapparent as well 
as apparent, accordant with our being — but that those who rise above the ordinary nature 
of man, fade from before our imperfect organs ; they remain, in their " love, beauty, and 
delight," in a world congenial to them — we, clogged by " error, ignorance, and strife," see 
them not, till we are fitted by purification and improvement for their higher state.* For myself, 
no religious doctrine, nor philosophical precept, can shake the faith that a mind so original, so 
delicately and beautifully moulded, as Shelley's, so endowed with wondrous powers and eagle- 
eyed genius — so good, so pure — would never be shattered and dispersed by the Creator ; but that 
the qualities and consciousness that formed him, are not only indestructible in themselves, but 
in the form under which they were united here, and that to become worthy of him is to assure 
the bliss of a reunion. 

The fragments of metaphysics will be highly prized by a metaphysician. Such a one is 
aware how difficult it is to strip bare the internal nature of man, to divest it of prejudice, of the 
mistakes engendered by familiarity, and by language, which has become one with certain ideas, 
and those very ideas erroneous. Had not Shelley deserted metaphysics for poetry in his youth, 
and had he not been lost to us early, so that all his vaster projects were wrecked with him in 
the waves, he would have presented the world with a complete theory of mind ; a theory to 
which Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant, would have contributed ; but more simple, unimpugnable, 
and entire, than the systems of these writers. His nerves, indeed, were so susceptible, that 
these intense meditations on his own nature, thrilled him with pain. Thought kindled 
imagination and awoke sensation, and rendered him dizzy from too great keenness of emotion ; 



* " But in this life 

Of terror, ignorance, and strife, 
Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream : 

It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant, if one considers it, 
To own that death itself must be, 
Like all the rest, a mockery. 

That garden sweet, that lady fair, 
And all sweet shapes, and odours there, 
In truth, hav3 never passed away ; 
'Tis we, 'tis ours are changed— not they. 

For love, and beauty, and delight, 
There is no death, nor change; their might 
Exceeds our organs, which endure 
No light, being themselves obscure." 



PREFACE. 



till awe and tremor possessed him, and he fled to the voice and presence of one he loved to 
relieve the mysterious agitation that shook him.* 

He at one time meditated a popular essay on morals; to show how virtue resulted from 
the nature of man, and that to fulfil its laws was to abide by that principle from the fulfilment 
of which happiness is to spring. The few pages here given are all that he left on this subject. 

The fragment marked as second in these " Speculations on Morals " is remarkable for its 
subtlety and truth. I found it on a single leaf, disjoined from any other subject. — It gives the 
true key to the history of man ; and above all, to those rules of conduct whence mutual happiness 
has its source and security. 

This concludes the essays and fragments of Shelley. I do not give them as the whole that 
he left, but as the most interesting portion. A Treatise on Political Reform and other 
fragments remain, to be published when his works assume a complete shape. 

I do not know why Shelley selected the "Ion" of Plato to translate. Probably because 
he thought it characteristic ; that it unfolded peculiar ideas, and those Platonic, with regard 
to poetry ; and gave insight into portions of Athenian manners, pursuits, and views, which 
would have been otherwise lost to us. We find manifestation here of the exceeding partiality 
felt by the Greeks, for every exhibition of eloquence. It testifies that love of interchanging and 
enlarging ideas by conversation, which in modern society, through our domestic system of life, 
is too often narrowed to petty objects, and which, from their fashion of conversing in streets and 
under porticoes, and in public places, became a passion far more intense than with us. Among 
those who ministered exclusively to this taste, were the rhapsodists ; and among rhapsodists, 
Ion himself tells us, he was the most eminent of his day ; that he was a man of enthusiastic 
and poetic temperament, and abundantly gifted with the power of arranging his thoughts in 
glowing and fascinating language, his success proves. But he was singularly deficient in reason. 
When Socrates presses on him the question of, whether he as a rhapsodist is as well versed in 
nautical, hippodromic, and other arts, as sailors, charioteers, and various artisans 1 he gives up 
the point with the most foolish inanity. One would fancy that practice in his pursuit would 
have caused him to reply, that though he was neither mariner nor horseman, nor practically 
skilled in any other of the pursuits in question, yet that he had consulted men versed in them ; 
and enriching his mind with the knowledge afforded by adepts in all arts, he was better qualified 
by study and by his gift of language and enthusiasm to explain these, as they form a portion of 
Homer's poetry, than any individual whose knowledge was limited to one subject only. But 
[on had no such scientific view of his profession. He gives up point after point, till, as Socrates 
observes, he most absurdly strives at victory, under the form of an expert leader of armies. In 
this, as in all the other of Plato's writings, we are perpetually referred, with regard to the 
enthusiastic and ideal portion of our intellect, to something above and beyond our sphere, the 
inspiration of the God — the influence exercised over the human mind, either through the 
direct agency of the deities, or our own half-blind memory of divine knowledge acquired by 
the soul in its antenatal state. Shelley left Ion imperfect — I thought it better that it should 
appear as a whole — but at the same time have marked with brackets the passages that have 
been added ; the rest appears exactly as Shelley left it. 

Respect for the name of Plato as well as that of Shelley, and reliance on the curiosity 

* See p. 62. 



PREFACE. 



that the English reader must fool with regard to the sealed book of the Ancient Wonder, 
erased me bo include in this volume the fragment of " Menexenus," and passages from 
n The Republic." In the first we have another admirable specimen of Socratic irony. In 
the latter the opinions and views of Plato enounced in " The Republic," which appeared 
remarkable to Shelley, are preserved, with the addition, in some instances, of his own brief 
observations on them. 

The rest of the volume is chiefly composed of letters. " The Journal of a Six Weeks' Tour," 
and " Letters from Geneva," were published many years ago by Shelley himself. The Journal 
is singular, from the circumstance that it was not written for publication, and was deemed 
too trivial for such by its author. Shelley caused it to be printed, and added to it his own 
letters, which contain some of the most beautiful descriptions ever written. The Letters 
from Italy, which are addressed to the same gentleman as the recipient of the Letters from 
Geneva, are in a similar spirit of observation and remark. The reader can only regret that 
they are so few, and that one or two are missing. The eminent German writer, Jean Paul 
Richter, says, that " to describe any scene well, the poet must make the bosom of a man 
his camera obscura, and look at it through this." Shelley pursues this method in all his 
descriptions ; he always, as he says himself, looks beyond the actual object, for an internal 
meaning, typified, illustrated, or caused by the external appearance. Adoring beauty, he 
endeavoured to define it ; he was convinced that the canons of taste, if known, are irre- 
fragable ; and that these are to be sought in the most admirable works of art ; he therefore 
studied intently, and with anxious scrutiny, the parts in detail, and their harmony as a 
whole, to discover what tends to form a beautiful or sublime work. 

The loss of our beloved child at Rome, which drove us northward in trembling fear for 
the one soon after born, and the climate of Florence disagreeing so exceedingly with Shelley, 
he ceased at Pisa to be conversant with paintings and sculpture ; a circumstance he deplores 
in one of his letters, and in many points of view to be greatly regretted. 

His letters to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, and to Mr. Reveley, the son of the latter by a former 
marriage, display that helpful and generous benevolence and friendship which was Shelley's 
characteristic. He set on foot the project of a steam-boat to ply between Marseilles and Leghorn, 
for their benefit, as far as pecuniary profit might accrue ; at the same time that he took a fervent 
interest in the undertaking, for its own sake. It was not puerile vanity, but a nobler feeling of 
honest pride, that made him enjoy the idea of being the first to introduce steam navigation into 
the Gulf of Lyons, and to glory in the consciousness of being in this manner useful to his fellow- 
creatures. Unfortunately, he was condemned to experience a failure. The prospects and views 
of our friends drew them to England, and the boat and the engine were abandoned. Shelley 
was deeply disappointed ; yet it will be seen how generously he exculpates our friends to 
themselves, and relieves them from the remorse they might naturally feel for having thus wasted 
his money and disappointed his desires. It will be remembered that Shelley addressed a poetical 
letter to Mrs. Gisborne, when that lady was absent in England ; and I have mentioned, and in 
some measure described her, in my notes to the poems. " Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of 
my father in her younger days. She was a lady of great accomplishments, and charming from 
her frank affectionate nature. She had a most intense love of knowledge, a delicate and 
trembling sensibility, and preserved freshness of mind after a life of considerable adversity. As 
a favourite friend of my father, we had sought her with eagerness, and the most open and cordial 
friendship subsisted between us." 



PREFACE. 



The letters to Leigh Hunt have already been published. They are monuments of the 
friendship which he felt for the man to whom he dedicated his tragedy of " The Cenci," in 
terms of warm and just eulogium. I have obtained but few to other friends. He had, indeed, 
not more than one or two other correspondents. I have added such letters as, during our brief 
separations in Italy, were addressed to myself ; precious relics of love, kindness, gentleness, and 
wisdom. I have but one fault to find with them, or with Shelley, in my union with him. His 
inexpressible tenderness of disposition made him delight in giving pleasure, and, urged by this 
feeling, he praised too much. Nor were his endeavours to exalt his correspondent in her own 
eyes founded on this feeling only. He had never read " Wilhelm Meister," but I have heard 
him say that he regulated his conduct towards his friends by a maxim which I found afterwards 
in the pages of Goethe — " When we take people merely as they are, we make them worse ; 
when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can 
be improved." This rule may perhaps admit of dispute, and it may be argued that truth and 
frankness produce better fruits than the most generous deceit. But when we consider the 
difficulty of keeping our best virtues free from self-blindness and self-love, and recollect the 
intolerance and fault-finding that usually blots social intercourse ; and compare such with the 
degree of forbearance and imaginative sympathy, so to speak, which such a system necessitates, 
we must think highly of the generosity and self-abnegation of the man who regulated his conduct 
undeviatingly by it. 

Can anything be more beautiful than these letters 1 They are adorned by simplicity, 
tenderness, and generosity, combined with manly views, and acute observation. His practical 
opinions may be found here. His indignant detestation of political oppression did not prevent 
him from deprecating the smallest approach to similar crimes on the part of his own party j and 
he abjured revenge and retaliation, while he strenuously advocated reform. He felt assured that 
there would be a change for the better in our institutions ; he feared bloodshed, he feared the 
ruin of many. Wedded as he was to the cause of public good, he would have hailed the changes 
that since his time have so signally ameliorated our institutions and opinions, each acting on the 
other, and which still, we may hope, are proceeding towards the establishment of that liberty 
and toleration which he worshipped. " The thing to fear," he observes, " will be, that the 
change should proceed too fast — it must be gradual to be secure." 

I do not conceal that I am far from satisfied with the tone in which the criticisms on Shelley i 
are written. Some among these writers praise the poetry with enthusiasm, and even discrimi- 
nation ; but none understand the man. I hope this volume will set him in a juster point of 
view. If it be alleged in praise of Goethe that he was an artist as well as a poet ; that his i 
principles of composition, his theories of wisdom and virtue, and the ends of existence, rested on 
a noble and secure basis ; not less does that praise belong to Shelley. His Defence of Poetry is 
alone sufficient to prove that his views were, in every respect, defined and complete ; his faith 
in good continued firm, and his respect for his fellow-creatures was unimpaired by the wrongs he 
suffered. Every word of his letters displays that modesty, that forbearance, and mingled meekness ' 
and resolution that, in my mind, form the perfection of man. " Gentle, brave, and generous," he \ 
describes the Poet in Alastor : such he was himself, beyond any man I have ever known. To 
these admirable qualities were added, his genius. He had but one defect— which was his ! 
leaving his life incomplete by an early death. that the serener hopes of maturity, the happier | 
contentment of mid-life, had descended on his dear head, to calm the turbulence of youthful 
impetuosity— that he had lived to see his country advance towards freedom, and to enrich the 
world with his own virtues and genius in their completion of experience and power ! When 



PREFACE. 



1 think that such things might have been, and of my own share in such good and happiness ; 
the pang occasioned by his loss can never pass away — and I gain resignation only by believing 
that he was spared much suffering, and that he has passed into a sphere of being, better adapted 
to his inexpressible tenderness, his generous sympathies, and his richly gifted mind. That, free 
from the physical pain to which he was a martyr, and unshackled by the fleshly bars and 
imperfect senses which hedged him in on earth, he enjoys beauty, and good, and love there, 
where those to whom he was united on earth by various ties of affection, sympathy, and 
admiration, may hope to join him. 



Putney. December, 1834. 



CONTENTS. 



RAUK 

1 



Id 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY 

ESSAY ON THE LITERATURE, ARTS, AND MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS— 

A FRAGMENT * 

PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO 18 

THE BANQUET— TRANSLATED FROM PLATO IS 

ON LOVE 41 

THE COLISEUM— A FRAGMENT 42 

THE ASSASSINS— FRAGMENT OF A ROMANCE .... ... 45 

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH 52 

ON LIFE 55 

ON A FUTURE STATE 57 

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 

I. The Mind 59 

II. What Metaphysics are — Errors in the usual Methods of considering them 60 

III. Difficulty of Analysing the Human Mind 60 

IV. How the Analysis should be carried on 61 

V. Catalogue of the Phenomena of Dreams . . . . . . . . 61 

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 

I. Plan of a Treatise on Morals 62 

II. Moral Science consists in considering the Difference, not the Resemblance, 

of Persons 66 

ION ; OR, OF THE ILIAD— TRANSLATED FROM PLATO 67 

MENEXENUS; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION— A FRAGMENT . . . 73 

FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO 75 

ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO 78 



i 




CONTENTS. 










PAGE 


JOURNAL OF A SIX WEEKS' 


TOUR ....... 


. 70 


LETTERS FROM GENEVA 




. . <J0 


JOURNAL AT GENEVA.— GHOST STORIES 


. 101 


LETTERS FROM ITALY :— 










LYONS. 




I. 


To Lbigh Hunt, Esq. . . 


104 






MILAN. 




II. 


To T. i,. P., Esq. 




. 104 


III. 


To T. L. P., Esq. 




. . 105 


IV. 


To T. L. P., Esq. 


LEGHORN. 


. 107 


V. 


To T. L. P., Esq. 


BAGNI DI LUCCA. 


. . 107 


VI. 


To Mr. and Mrs. 


GlSBORNE 


. 107 


VII. 


To William Godwin, Esq 


. . 108 






FLORENCE. 




VIII. 


To Mrs. Shelley 


VENICE. 


. 109 


IX. 


To Mrs. Shelley 


PADUA. 




X. 


To Mrs. Shelley 


ESTE. 




XI. 


To T. L. P., Esq. 


FERRARA. 


. . Ill 


XII. 


To T. L. P., Esq. 


BOLOGNA. 


. 113 


XIII. 


To T. L. P., Esq. 




.. . 114 



ROME. , 

XIV. To T. L. P., Esq 117 

NAPLES. 

XV. To T. L. P., Esq. 118 

XVI. To T. L. P., Esq 121 

XVII. To T. L. P., Esq , 124 

XVIII. To T. L. P., Esq. . . 128 

XIX. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne , . , 12P 



CONTENTS. 



LETTERS FROM ITALY, continued :— 

LEGHORN. 

iAOH 

XX. To T. L. P., Esq 180 

XXI. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. ... 131 

XXII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq 13! 

XXIII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq ... 132 

FLORENCE. 

XXIV. To Mrs. Gisborne 133 

XXV. To Henry Reveley, Esq. 134 

XXVI. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne .135 

XXVII. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 135 

XXVIII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. 136 

XXIX. To Mrs. Gisborne . , .137 

XXX. To John Gisborne, Esq ... 137 

XXXI. To Henry Reveley, Esq 138 

XXXII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq 139 

XXXIII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq . iS9 

XXXIV. To Henry Reveley, Esq. . . . „ 140 

XXXV. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 140 

XXXVI. To John Gisborne, Esq 141 

Remarks on some of the Statues in the Gallery of Florence . . , .141 

PISA. 

XXXVII. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne .'..••. «... 144 
XXXVIII. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 144 

XXXIX. To John Gisborne, Esq 144 

XL. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne . . . , « . . .145 

XLI. To Mrs. Shelley 146 

LEGHORN. 
XLII. To Mrs. Shelley 146 

PISA. 

XLIII. To the Editor of the "Quarterly Review" 147 

XLIV. To John Gisborne, Esq. 147 

XLV. To Henry Reveley, Esq 148 

XL VI. To Henry Reveley, Esq. 143 

BAGNI DI PISA. 
XL VII. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne . . . . . . . . .148 

XLV III. To John Gisborne, Esq . . 148 

XLIX. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne .149 

L. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 149 



CONTENTS. 



LETTERS PROM ITALY, continual .— 

FLORENCE. 

PAGK 

LI. To Mrs. Shells? .... 150 

BOLOGNA. 

LII. To Mrs. Shelley 150 

RAVENNA. 

L1II. To Mrs. Shelley .150 

LIV. To Mrs. Shelley . 151 

LV. To Mrs. Shelley 153 

LVI. To Mrs. Shelley . „ 154 

LVII. To Mrs. Shelley . 154 

PISA. 

LV1.1L To Leigh Hunt, Esq. ... - 154 

L1X. To Horatio Smith, Esq 156 

LX. To John Gisborne, Esq • . . 157 

LXT. To J. Severn, Esq 158 

LXII. To John Gisborne, Esq. . . . » 159 

LXIII. To * *, Esq. 160 

LERICI 

LXIV. To Mrs. Shelley 161 

LXV. To Horatio Smith, Esq. . « 161 

LXVI. To * *, Esq. . 163 

PISA. 

LXVII. To Mrs. Williams . . . . . , . - . . . J63 

LXVIII. To Mrs. Shelley . r . .164 



" That thou, O my Brother, impart to me truly how it stands with thee in that inner 
man of thine ; what lively images of things past thy memory has painted there ; what hopes, 
what thoughts, affections, knowledge, do now dwell there. For this, and; no other object that 
I can see, was the gift of hearing and speech bestowed on us two." — Thomas Carlylk. 






ESSAYS, 
LETTERS FROM ABROAD 



ETC. ETC. 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



PART I. 



According to one mode of regarding those two 
classes of mental action, which are called reason 
and imagination, the former may be considered as 
mind contemplating the relations borne by one 
thought to another, however produced ; and the 
latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts so as 
to colour them with its own light, and composing 
from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each 
containing within itself the principle of its own 
integrity. The one is the rb iroieiv, or the principle 
of synthesis, and has for its objects those forms 
which are common to universal nature and exist- 
ence itself ; the other is the rb KoyiCew, or principle 
of analysis, and its action regards the relations of 
things, simply as relations ; considering thoughts, 
not in their integral unity, but as the algebraical 
representations which conduct to certain general 
results. Reason is the enumeration of quantities 
already known ; imagination is the perception of 
the value of those quantities, both separately and 
as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and 
imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is 
to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as 
the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the sub- 
stance. 

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 
u the expression of the imagination : " and poetry 
is connate with the origin of man. Man is an 
instrument over which a series of external and 
internal impressions are driven, like the alterna- 
tions of an ever-changing wind over an iEolian 
lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-chang- 
ing melody. But there is a principle within the 
human being, and perhaps within all sentient 
3, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and 



produces not melody, alone, but harmony, oy an 
internal adjustment of the sounds or motions 
thus excited to the impressions which excite them. 
It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords 
to the motions of that which strikes them, in a 
determined proportion of sound ; even as the 
musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of 
the lyre. A child at play by itself will express its 
delight by its voice and motions ; and every inflexion 
of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation 
to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable 
impressions which awakened it ; it will be the 
reflected image of that impression ; and as the 
lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died 
away, so the child seeks, by prolonging in its 
voice and motions the duration of the effect, to 
prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In 
relation to the objects which delight a child, these 
expressions are, what poetry is to higher objects. 
The savage (for the savage is to ages what the 
child is to years) expresses the emotions produced 
in him by surrounding objects in a similar man- 
ner j and language and gesture, together with 
plastic or pictorial imitation, become the image 
of the combined effect of those objects, and of his 
apprehension of them. Man in society, with all 
his passions and his pleasures, next becomes the 
object of the passions and pleasures of man ; an 
additional class of emotions produces an augmented 
treasure of expressions ; and language, gesture, 
and the imitative arts, become at once the repre- 
sentation and the medium, the pencil and the 
picture, the chisel and the statue, the chord and 
the harmony. The social sympathies, or those 
laws from which, as from its elements, society 
results, begin to develop themselves from the 
moment that two human beings coexist : the 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



future is contained within the present, an the plant 

within the BBed ; and equality, diversity, unity, 

oontrast, mutual dependanoe, beeame the princi- 
ples alone capable of affording the motives accord- 
ing to which the will of a social being is deter- 
mined to action, inasmuch as he is social ; and 
constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in senti- 
ment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love 
in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in 
the infancy of society, observe a certain order in 
their words and actions, distinct from that of the 
objects and the impressions represented by them, 
all expression being subject to the laws of that 
from which it proceeds. But let us dismiss those 
more general considerations which might involve 
an inquiry into the principles of society itself, and 
restrict our view to the manner in which the 
imagination is expressed upon its forms. 

In the youth of the world, men dance and sing 
and imitate natural objects, observing in these 
actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or 
order. And, although all men observe a similar, 
they observe not the same order, in the motions 
of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the 
combinations of language, in the series of their 
imitations of natural objects. For there is a 
certain order or rhythm belonging to each of 
these classes of mimetic representation, from which 
the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser 
and purer pleasure than from any other : the 
sense of an approximation to this order has been 
called taste by modern writers. Every man in 
the infancy of art, observes an order which 
approximates more or less closely to that from 
which this highest delight results : but the diver- 
sity is not sufficiently marked, as that its grada- 
tions should be sensible, except in those instances 
where the predominance of this faculty of ap- 
proximation to the beautiful (for so we may be 
permitted to name the relation between this 
highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. 
Those in whom it exists in excess are poets, in 
the most universal sense of the word ; and the 
pleasure resulting from the manner in which they 
express the influence of society or nature upon 
their own minds, communicates itself to others, 
and gathers a sort of reduplication from that com- 
munity. Their language is vitally metaphorical ; 
that is, it marks the before unapprehended rela- 
tions of things and perpetuates their apprehension, 
until the words which represent them, become, 
through time, signs for portions or classes of 
thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts ; 
and then if no new poets should arise to create 
afresh the associations which have been thus dis- 
organised, language will be dead to all the nobler 



purposes of human intercourse. These similitudes 
or relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be 
* the same footsteps of nature impressed upon the 
various subjects of the world * " — and he considers 
the faculty which perceives them as the storehouse 
of axioms common to all knowledge. In the 
infancy of society every author is necessarily a 
poet, because language itself is poetry ; and to be 
a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, 
in a word, the good which exists in the relation, 
subsisting, first between existence and perception, 
and secondly between perception and expression. 
Every original language near to its source is in 
itself the chaos of a cyclic poem : the copiousness 
of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar 
are the works of a later age, and are merely the 
catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry. 
But poets, or those who imagine and express 
this indestructible order, are not only the authors 
of language and of music, of the dance, and 
architecture, and statuary, and painting ; they 
are the institutors of laws, and the founders of 
civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, 
and the teachers, who draw into a certain pro- 
pinquity with the beautiful and the true, that 
partial apprehension of the agencies of the in- 
visible world which is called religion. Hence all 
original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of 
allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of 
false and true. Poets, according to the circum- 
stances of the age and nation in which they 
appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the 
world, legislators, or prophets : a poet essentially 
comprises and unites both these characters. For 
he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, 
and discovers those laws according to which pre- 
sent tlaings ought to be ordered, but he beholds 
the future in the present, and his thoughts are 
the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest 
time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in 
the gross sense of the word, or that they can 
foretell the fonn as surely as they foreknow the 
spirit of events : such is the pretence of super- 
stition, which would make poetry an attribute of 
prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of 
poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the 
infinite, and the one ; as far as relates to his 
conceptions, time and place and number are not. 
The grammatical forms which express the moods 
of time, and the difference of persons, and the 
distinction of place, are convertible with respect 
to the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry ; 
and the choruses of iEschylus, and the book of 
Job, and Dante's Paradise, would afford, more 

* De Augment. Scient., cap. 1, lib. iii. 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



than any other writings, examples of this fact, if 
the limits of this essay did not forbid citation. 
The creations of sculpture, painting, and music, 
are illustrations still more decisive. 

Language, colour, form, and religious and civil 
habits of action, are all the instruments and 
materials of poetry ; they may be called poetry by 
that figure of speech which considers the effect as 
a synonyme of the cause. But poetry in a more 
restricted sense expresses those arrangements of 
language, and especially metrical language, which 
are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne 
is curtained within the invisible nature of man. 
And this springs from the nature itself of language, 
which is a more direct representation of the actions 
and passions of our internal being, and is suscepti- 
ble of more various and delicate combinations, than 
colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic and 
obedient to the control of that faculty of which it 
is the creation. For language is arbitrarily pro- 
duced by the imagination, and has relation to 
thoughts alone ; but all other materials, instru- 
ments, and conditions of art, have relations among 
each other, which limit and interpose between 
conception and expression. The former is as a 
mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which 
enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums 
of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors, 
painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic 
powers of the great masters of these arts may 
yield in no degree to that of those who have 
employed language as the hieroglyphic of their 
thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the 
restricted sense of the term ; as two performers 
of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a 
guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and 
founders of religions, so long as their institutions 
last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the 
restricted sense ; but it can scarcely be a question, 
whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their 
flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar usually 
conciliates, together with that which belonged to 
them in their higher character of poets, any excess 
will remain. 

We have thus circumscribed the word poetry 
within the limits of that art which is the most 
familiar and the most perfect expression of the 
faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make 
the circle still narrower, and to determine the 
distinction between measured and unmeasured 
language ; for the pepular division into prose and 
verse is hiadmissible in accurate philosophy. 

Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both 
between each other and towards that which they 
represent, and a perception of the order of those 
relations has always been found connected with a 



perception of the order of the relatione of thoughts. 
lionet! the language of poets 1ms ever affected a 
certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of 

sound, without which it were not poetry, and which 
is scarcely leafi indispensable to the communication 
of its influence, than the words themselves, without 
reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity 
of translation ; it were as wise to cast a violet into 
a crucible that you might discover the formal prin- 
ciple of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse 
from one language into another the creations of a 
poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, 
or it will bear no flower — and this is the burthen 
of the curse of Babel. 

An observation of the regular mode of the recur- 
rence of harmony in the language of poetical minds, 
together with its relation to music, produced metre, 
or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony 
and language. Yet it is by no means essential that 
a poet should accommodate his language to this 
traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its 
spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed conve- 
nient and popular, and to be preferred, especially 
in such composition as includes much action : but 
every great poet must inevitably innovate upon 
the example of his predecessors in the exact 
structure of his peculiar versification. The distinc- 
tion between poets and prose writers is a vulgar 
error. The distinction between philosophers and 
poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially 
a poet — the truth and splendour of his imagery, 
and the melody of his language, are the most in- 
tense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the 
measure of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, 
because he sought to kindle a harmony in. thoughts 
divested of shape and action, and he forbore to 
invent any regular plan of rhythm which would 
include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses 
of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence 
of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon 
was a poet.* His language ha3 a sweet and 
majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less 
than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philo- 
sophy satisfies the intellect ; it is a strain which 
distends, and then bursts the circumference of the 
reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with 
it into the universal element with which it has 
perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions 
in opinion are not only necessarily poets as they 
are inventors, nor even as then' words unveil the 
permanent analogy of things by images which 
participate in the fife of truth ; but as their periods 
are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in 
themselves the elements of verse ; being the echo 



* See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death 
particularly. 

b 2 



A DEFENCE OF FOETRY. 



of the eternal mush*. Nor are (hose Bupreme 
I dots, who have employed traditional forms of 
rhythm on Account of the form and action of their 
subjects, loss capable of perceiving and teaching the 
truth of things, than those who have omitted that 
form. Shakspeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine 
ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of 
the very loftiest power. 

A poem is the very image of life expressed in its 
eternal truth. There is this difference between a 
BtorV and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of 
detached facts, which have no other connexion than 
time, place, circumstance, cause and effect ; the 
other is the creation of actions according to the 
unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in 
the miud of the Creator, which is itself the image 
of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies 
only to a definite period of time, and a certain com- 
bination of events which can never again recur ; the 
other is universal, and contains within itself the 
germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions 
have place in the possible varieties of human nature. 
Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the 
story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry 
which should invest them, augments that of poetry, 
and for ever develops new and wonderful applica- 
tions of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence 
epitomes have been called the moths of just history ; 
they eat out the poetry of it. A story of particular- 
facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts 
that which should be .beautiful : poetry is a mirror 
which makes beautiful that which is distorted. 

The parts of a composition may be poetical, 
without the composition as a whole being a poem. 
A single sentence may be considered as a whole, 
though it may be found in the-anidst of a series of 
unassimilated portions ; a single word even may be 
a spark of inextinguishable thought. And thus all 
the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, 
were poets ; and although the plan of these writers, 
especially that of Livy, restrained them from de- 
veloping this faculty in its highest degree, they 
made copious and ample amends for their subjec- 
tion, by filling all the interstices of their subjects 
with living images. 

Having determined what is poetry, and who are 
poets, let us proceed to estimate its effects upon 
society. 

Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure : all 
spnits on which it falls open themselves to receive 
the wisdom which is mingled with its delight. 
In the infancy of the world, neither poets them- 
selves nor their auditors are fully aware of the 
excellence of poetry : for it acts in a divine and 
unapprehended manner, beyond and above con- 
sciousness ; and it is reserved for future genera- 



tions to contemplate and measure the mighty cause 
and effect in all the strength and splendour of 
their union. Even in modern times, no living poet 
ever arrived at the fulness of his fame ; the jury 
which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as 
he does to all time, must be composed of his .peers : 
it must be impanneled by Time from the selectest 
of the wise of many generations. A poet is a 
nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer 
its own solitude with sweet sounds ; his auditors 
are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen 
musician, who feel that they are moved and soft- 
ened, yet know not whence or why. The poems 
of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight 
of infant Greece ; they w r ere the elements of that 
social system which is the column upon which all 
succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer em- 
bodied the ideal perfection of his age in human 
character ; nor can we doubt that those who read 
his verses were awakened to an ambition of becom- 
ing like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses : the 
truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and 
persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled 
to the depths in these immortal creations : the 
sentiments of the auditors must have been refined 
and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and 
lovely impersonations, until from admiring they 
imitated, and from imitation they identified them- 
selves with the objects of their admiration. Nor 
let it be objected, that these characters are remote 
from moral perfection, and that they can by no 
meant, be considered as edifying patterns for gene- 
ral imitation. Every epoch, under names more 
or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors ; 
Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a 
semi-barbarous age ; and Self-deceit is the veiled 
image of unknown evil, before which luxury and 
satiety he prostrate. But a poet considers the 
vices of his contemporaries as the temporary dress 
in which his creations must be arrayed, and which 
cover without concealing the eternal proportions 
of their beauty. An epic or dramatic personage 
is understood to wear them around his soul, as he 
may the ancient armour or the modern uniform 
around his body ; whilst it is easy to conceive a 
dress more graceful than either. The beauty of 
the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by 
its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form 
shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and 
indicate the shape it hides from the manner in 
which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful 
motions will express themselves through the most 
barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of 
the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty 
of their conceptions hi its naked truth and splen- 
dour ; and it is doubtful whether the alloy of 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



costume, habit, &c, be not necessary to temper 
this planetary music i'or mortal ears. 

The whole objection, however, of the immorality 
of poetry rests upon a misconception of the man- 
ner in which poetry acts to produce the moral im- 
provement of man. Ethical science arranges the 
elements which poetry has created, and propounds 
schemes and proposes examples of civil and do- 
mestic life : nor is it for want of admirable doc- 
trines that men hate, and despise, and censure, 
and deceive, and subjugate one another. But 
poetry acts in another and diviner maimer. It 
awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering 
it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended 
combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from 
the hidden beauty of the world, and makes fami- 
liar objects be as if they were not familiar ; it 
reproduces all that it represents, and the imper- 
sonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thence- 
forward in the minds of those who have once con- 
templated them, as memorials of that gentle and 
exalted content which extends itself over all 
thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The 
great secret of morals is love ; or a going out of 
our own nature, and an identification of ourselves 
with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, 
or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly 
good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively ; 
he must put himself in the place of another and of 
many others ; the pains and pleasures of his spe- 
cies must become his own. The great instrument 
of moral good is the imagination ; and poetry ad- 
ministers to the effect by acting upon the cause. 
Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagina- 
tion by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new 
delight, which have the power of attracting and 
assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, 
and which form new intervals and interstices whose 
void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strength- 
ens the faculty which is the organ of the moral 
nature of man, in the same manner as exercise 
strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do 
ill to embody his own conceptions of right and 
wrong, which are usually those of his place and 
time, in his poetical creations, which participate in 
neither. By this assumption of the inferior office 
of interpreting the effect, in which perhaps after 
all he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he 
would resign a glory in a participation in the 
cause. There was little danger that Homer, or 
any of the eternal poets, should have so far mis- 
understood themselves as to have abdicated this 
throne of their widest dominion. Those in whom 
the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense, 
as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have fre- 
quently affected a moral aim, and the effect of 



their poetry is diminished in exact proportion to 

the degree in which they compel us to advert to 
this purpose. 

Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a 
certain interval by the dramatic and lyrical poets 
of Athens, who flourished contemporaneously with 
all that is most perfect in the kindred expressions 
of the poetical faculty ; architecture, painting, 
music, the dance, sculpture, philosophy, and we 
may add, the forms of civil life. For although the 
scheme of Athenian society was deformed by many 
imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry 
and Christianity has erased from the habits and 
institutions of modern Europe ; yet never at any 
other period has so much energy, beauty, and virtue, 
been developed ; never was blind strength and 
stubborn form so disciplined and rendered subject 
to the will of man, or that will less repugnant to 
the dictates of the beautiful and the true, as 
during the century which preceded the death of 
Soerates. Of no other epoch in the history of our 
species have we records and fragments stamped 
so visibly with the image of the divinity in man. 
But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in 
language, which has rendered this epoch memorable 
above all others, and the storehouse of examples 
to everlasting time. For written poetry existed 
at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts, 
and it is an idle inquiry to demand which gave and 
which received the light, which all, as from a com- 
mon focus, have scattered over the darkest periods 
of succeeding time. We know no more of cause 
and effect than a constant conjunction of events : 
poetry is ever found to co-exist with whatever other 
arts contribute to the happiness and perfection of 
man. I appeal to what has already been esta- 
blished to distinguish between the cause and the 
effect. 

It was at the period here adverted to, that the 
drama had its birth ; and however a succeeding 
writer may have equalled or surpassed those few 
great specimens of the Athenian drama which have 
been preserved to us, it is indisputable that the 
art itself never was understood or practised accord 
ing to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens. For 
the Athenians employed language, action, music, 
painting, the dance, and religious institutions, to 
produce a common effect in the representation of 
the highest idealisms of passion and of power ; 
each division in the art was made perfect in its 
kind by artists of the most consummate skill, and 
was disciplined into a beautiful proportion and 
unity one towards the other. On the modern 
stage a few only of the elements capable of express- 
ing the image of the poet's conception are em- 
ployed at once. We have tragedy without music 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



and dancing ; and music ami dancing without the 
highest impersonations of which they are the fit 
accompaniment, and both without religion and 
solemnity. Religious institution has indeed been 
usually banished from the stage. Our system of 
divesting the actor's face of a mask, on which the 
many expressions appropriated to his dramatic 
character might be moulded into one permanent 
and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a 
partial and inharmonious effect ; it is fit for nothing 
but a monologue, where all the attention may be 
directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. 
The modem practice of blending comedy with 
tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of 
practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dra- 
matic circle ; but the comedy should be ae in King 
Lear, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps 
the intervention of this principle which determines 
the balance in favour of King Lear against the 
CEdipus Tyrannus or the Agamemnon, or, if you 
will, the trilogies with which they are connected ; 
unless the intense power of the choral poetry, es- 
pecially that of the latter, should be considered as 
restoring the equilibrium. King Lear, if it can 
sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the 
most perfect specimen of the dramatic: art existing 
in the world ; in spite of the narrow conditions to 
which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of 
the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed 
in modern Europe. Calderon, in his religious 
Autos, has attempted to fulfil some of the high 
conditions of dramatic representation neglected by 
Shakspeare ; such as the establishing a relation 
between the drama and religion, and the accom- 
modating them to music and dancing ; but he 
omits the observation of conditions still more im- 
portant, and more is lost than gained by the sub- 
stitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated 
idealisms of a distorted superstition for the living 
impersonations of the truth of human passion. 

But I digress. — The connexion of scenic exhibi- 
tions with the improvement or corruption of the 
manners of men, has been universally recognised : 
in other words, the presence or absence of poetry 
in its most perfect and universal form, has been 
found to be connected with good and evil in con- 
duct or habit. The corruption which has been 
imputed to the drama as an effect, begins, when 
the poetry employed in its constitution ends : I 
appeal to the history of manners whether the pe- 
riods of the growth of the one and the decline of 
the other have not corresponded with an exactness 
equal to any example of moral cause and effect. 

The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it 
may have approached to its perfection, ever co- 
existed with the moral and intellectual greatness 



of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets 
are as mirrors in which the spectator beholds him- 
self, under a thin disguise of circumstance, stript 
of all but that ideal perfection and energy which 
every one feels to be the internal type of all that 
he loves, admires, and would become. The ima- 
gination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and 
passions so mighty, that they distend in their con- 
ception the capacity of that by which they are con- 
ceived ; the good affections are strengthened by 
pity, indignation, terror and sorrow ; and an exalted 
calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high 
exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life : 
even crime is disarmed of half its horror and all 
its contagion by being represented as the fatal con- 
sequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature ; 
error is thus divested of its wilfulness ; men can 
no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. 
In a drama of the highest order there is little food 
for censure or hatred ; it teaches rather self- 
knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor 
the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that 
which it resembles. The drama, so long as it con- 
tinues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many- 
sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of 
human nature and divides and reproduces them 
from the simplicity of these elementary forms, and 
touches them with majesty and beauty, and mul- 
tiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the 
power of propagating its like wherever it may fall. 
But in periods of the decay of social life, the 
drama sympathises with that decay. Tragedy 
becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great 
masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmo- 
nious accompaniment of the kindred arts ; and 
often the very form misunderstood, or a weak 
attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer 
considers as moral truths ; and which are usually 
no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice 
or weakness, with which the author, in common 
with his auditors, are infected. Hence what has 
been called the classical and domestic drama. Addi- 
son's " Cato " is a specimen of the one ; and would 
it were not superfluous to cite examples of the 
other ! To such purposes poetry cannot be made 
subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever 
unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that 
would contain it. And thus we observe that all 
dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative 
in a singular degree ; they affect sentiment and 
passion, which, divested of imagination, are other 
names for caprice and appetite. The period in 
our own history of the grossest degradation of the 
drama is the reign of Charles II., when all forms 
in which poetry had been accustomed to be ex- 
pressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone 
illuminating an age unworthy of him. At such 
periods the calculating principle pervades all the 
forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to 
be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal 
universality : wit succeeds to humour ; we laugh 
from self-complacency and triumph, instead of plea- 
sure ; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt, succeed 
to sympathetic merriment ; we hardly laugh, but 
we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy 
against the divine beauty hi life, becomes, from the 
very veil which it assumes, more active if less dis- 
gusting : it is a monster for which the corruption 
of society for ever brings forth new food, which it 
devours in secret. 

The drama being that form under which a greater 
number of modes of expression of poetry are sus- 
ceptible of being combined than any other, the 
connexion of poetry and social good is more ob- 
servable in the drama than in whatever other form. 
And it is indisputable that the highest perfection 
of human society has ever corresponded with the 
highest dramatic excellence ; and that the corrup- 
tion or the extinction of the drama in a nation 
where it has once flourished, is a mark of a corrup- 
tion of manners, and an extinction of the energies 
which sustain the soul of social life. But, as 
MachiaveUi says of political institutions, that life 
may be preserved and renewed, if men should arise 
capable of bringing back the drama to its princi- 
ples. And this is true with respect to poetry in 
its most extended sense : all language, institution 
and form, require not only to be produced but to 
be sustained : the office and character of a poet 
participates in the divine nature as regards provi- 
dence, no less than as regards creation. 

Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal pre- 
dominance first of the Macedonian, and then of 
the Roman arms, were so many symbols of the 
extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in 
Greece. The bucolic writers, who found patronage 
under the lettered tyrants of Sicily and Egypt, 
were the* latest representatives of its most glorious 
reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious ; like 
the odour of the tuberose, it overcomes and sickens 
the spirit with excess of sweetness ; whilst the 
poetry of the preceding age was as a meadow-gale 
of June, which mingles the fragrance of all the 
flowers of the field, and adds a quickening and 
harmonising spirit of its own which endows the 
sense with a power of sustaining its extreme de- 
light. The bucolic and erotic delicacy in written 
poetry is correlative with that softness in statuary, 
music, and the kindred arts, and even in manners 
and institutions, which distinguished the epoch to 
winch I now refer. Nor is it the poetical faculty 



itself, or any misapplication of it, to which thia 
want of harmony is to be imputed. An equal sen- 
sibility to the influence of the senses and the affec- 
tions is to be found in the writings of Homer and 
Sophocles : the former, especially, has clothed sen- 
sual and pathetic images with irresistible attrac- 
tions. Their superiority over these succeeding 
writers consists in the presence of those thoughts 
which belong to the inner faculties of our nature, 
not in the absence of those which are connected 
with the external : their incomparable perfection 
consists in a harmony of the union of all. It is not 
what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, 
in which their imperfection consists. It is not inas- 
much as they were poets, but inasmuch as they 
were not poets, that they can be considered with 
any plausibility as connected with the corruption of 
their age. Had that corruption availed so as to 
extinguish in them the sensibility to pleasure, pas- 
sion, and natural scenery, which is imputed to them 
as an imperfection, the last triumph of evil would 
have been achieved. For the end of social corrup- 
tion is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure ; and, 
therefore, it is corruption. It begins at the ima- 
gination and the intellect as at the core, and distri- 
butes itself thence as a paralysing venom, through 
the affections into the very appetites, until all be- 
come a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives. 
At the approach of such a period, poetry ever ad- 
dresses itself to those faculties which are the last 
to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the 
footsteps of Astreea, departing from the world. 
Poetry ever communicates all the pleasure which 
men are capable of receiving : it is ever still the 
light of life ; the source of whatever of beautiful 
or generous or true can have place in an evil time. 
It will readily be confessed that those among the 
luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who 
were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were 
less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of 
their tribe. But corruption must utterly have 
destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry 
can ever cease. The sacred links of that chain 
have never been entirely disjoined, which descend- 
ing through the minds of many men is attached to 
those great minds, whence as from a magnet the 
invisible effluence is sent forth, which at once con- 
nects, animates, and sustains the life of all. It is 
the faculty which contains within itself the seeds 
at once of its own and of social renovation. And 
let us not circumscribe the effects of the bucolic 
and erotic poetry within the limits of the sensi- 
bility of those to whom it was addressed. They 
may have perceived the beauty of those immortal 
compositions, simply as fragments and isolated 
portions : those who are more finely organised, or 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



born in a happier ago, may recognise thorn as epi- 
BOdttB to that great poem, which all poets, like the 
co-operating thoughts of one groat mind, have 
built up since the beginning of the world. 

The BUM revolutions within ;i narrower sphere 
had place in ancient Rome ; but the actions and 
forms of its social life never seem to have been 
perfectly saturated with the poetical element. The 
Romans appeal* to have considered the Greeks as 
the selectest treasuries of the selectest forms of 
manners and of nature, and to have abstained from 
creating in measured language, sculpture, music, 
or architecture, any thing which might bear a par- 
ticular relation to their own condition, whilst it 
should bear a general one to the universal consti- 
tution of the world. But we judge from partial 
evidence, and we judge perhaps partially. Ennius, 
Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have 
been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Virgil 
in a very high sense, a creator. The chosen deli- 
cacy of expressions of the latter, are as a mist of 
light which conceal from us the intense and exceed- 
ing truth of his conceptions of nature. Livy is 
instinct with poetry. Yet Horace, Catullus, Ovid, 
and generally the other great writers of the Vir- 
gilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of 
Greece. The institutions also, and the religion of 
Rome, were less poetical than those of Greece, as 
the shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence 
poetry in Rome, seemed to follow, rather than ac- 
company, the perfection of political and domestic 
society. The true poetry of Rome lived in its 
institutions ; for whatever of beautiful, true, and 
majestic, they contained, could have sprung only 
from the faculty which creates the order in which 
they consist. The life of Camillus, the death of 
Regulus ; the expectation of the senators, in their 
godlike state, of the victorious Gauls ; the refusal 
of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after 
the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a 
refined calculation of the probable personal advan- 
tage to result from such a rhythm and order in the 
shows of life, to those who were at once the poets 
and the actors of these immortal dramas. The 
imagination beholding the beauty of this order, 
created it out of itself according to its own idea ; 
the consequence was empire, and the reward ever- 
living fame. These things are not the less poetry, 
quia carent vate sacro. They are the episodes of 
that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memo- 
ries of men. The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, 
fills the theatre of everlasting generations with their 
harmony. 

At length the ancient system of religion and 
manners had fulfilled the circle of its revolutions. 
And the world would have fallen into utter anarchy 



and darkness, but that there were found poets 
among the authors of the Christian and chivalric 
systems of manners and religion, who created forms 
of opinion and action never before conceived ; 
which, copied into the imaginations of men, became 
as generals to the bewildered armies of their 
thoughts. It is foreign to the present purpose to 
touch upon the evil produced by these systems : 
except that we protest, on the ground of the prin- 
ciples already established, that no portion of it can 
be attributed to the poetry they contain. 

It is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job, 
David, Solomon, and Isaiah, had produced a great 
effect upon the mind of Jesus and his disciples. 
The scattered fragments preserved to us by the 
biographers of this extraordinary person, are all 
instinct with the most vivid poetry. But his doc- 
trines seem to have been quickly distorted. At a 
certain period after the prevalence of a system of 
opinions founded upon those promulgated by him, 
the three forms into which Plato had distributed 
the faculties of mind underwent a sort of apothe- 
osis, and became the object of the worship of the 
civilised world. Here it is to be confessed that 
" Light seems to thicken," and 

" The crow makes wing to the rooky wood, 
Good things of day hegin to droop and drowse, 
And night's black agents to their preys do rouze." 

But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from 
the dust and blood of this fierce chaos ! how the 
world, as from a resurrection, balancing itself on 
the golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has 
reassumed its yet unwearied flight into the heaven 
of time. Listen to the music, unheard by outward 
ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind, 
nourishing its everlasting course with strength and 
swiftness. 

The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and 
the mythology and institutions of the Celtic con- 
querors of the Roman empire, outlived the dark- 
ness and the convulsions connected with their 
growth and victory, and blended themselves in a 
new fabric of manners and opinion. It is an error 
to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the 
Christian doctrines or the predominance of the 
Celtic nations. Whatever of evil their agencies 
may have contained sprang from the extinction of 
the poetical principle, connected with the progress 
of despotism and superstition. Men, from causes 
too intricate to be here discussed, had become 
insensible and selfish : their own will had become 
feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence 
the slaves of the will of others : lust, fear, avarice, 
cruelty, and fraud, characterised a race amongst 
whom no one was to be found capable of creating 
in form, language, or institution. The moral 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



anomalies of such a state of society arc- not justh 
to be charged upon any class of events immediately 
connected with them, and those events are most 
entitled to our approbation which could dissolve it 
most expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those 
who cannot distinguish words from thoughts, that 
many of these anomalies have been incorporated 
into our popular religion. 

It was not until the eleventh century that the 
effects of the poetry of the Christian and chivalric 
systems began to manifest themselves. The prin- 
ciple of equality had been discovered and applied 
by Plato in his Republic, as the theoretical rule of 
the mode in which the materials of pleasure and of 
power produced by the common skill and labour of 
human beings ought to be distributed among them. 
The limitations of this rule were asserted by him to 
be determined only by the sensibility of each, or the 
utility to result to all. Plato, following the doc- 
trines of Timaeus and Pythagoras, taught also a 
moral and intellectual system of doctrine, compre- 
hending at once the past, the present, and the 
future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged 
the sacred and eternal truths contained in these 
views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract 
purity, became the exoteric expression of the eso- 
teric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of anti- 
quity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations 
with the exhausted population of the south, im- 
pressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in 
their mythology and institutions. The result was 
a sum of the action and reaction of all the causes 
included in it ; for it may be assumed as a maxim 
that no nation or religion can supersede any other 
without incorporating into itself a portion of that 
which it supersedes. The abolition of personal 
and domestic slavery, and the emancipation of 
women from a great part of the degrading restraints 
of antiquity, were among the consequences of these 
events. 

The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of 
the highest political hope that it can enter into the 
mind of man to conceive. The freedom of women 
produced the poetry of sexual love. Love became 
a religion, the idols of whose worship were ever 
present. It was as if the statues of Apollo and 
the Muses had been endowed with life and motion, 
and had walked forth among their worshippers ; so 
that earth became peopled by the inhabitants of a 
diviner world. The familiar appearance and pro- 
ceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly, 
and a paradise was created as out of the wrecks of 
Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its 
creators were poets ; and language was the instru- 
ment of their art : " Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo 
scr isse." The Provencal Trouveurs, or inventors, 



preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, 
which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the 
delight which is in the grief of love. It is impos- 
sible to feel them without becoming a portion of 
that beauty which we contemplate : it were super- 
fluous to explain how the gentleness and the eleva- 
tion of mind connected with these sacred emotions 
can render men more amiable, more generous and 
wise, and lift them out of the dull vapours of the 
little world of self. Dante understood the secret 
things of love even more than Petrarch. His Vita 
Nuova is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of sen- 
timent and language : it is the idealised history 
of that period, and those intervals of his life which 
were dedicated to love. His apotheosis of Beatrice 
in Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and 
her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns him- 
self to have ascended to the throne of the Supreme 
Cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern 
poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed 
the judgment of the vulgar, and the order of the 
great acts of the "Divine Drama," in the mea- 
sure of the admiration which they accord to the 
Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a 
perpetual hymn of everlasting love. Love, which 
found a worthy poet in Plato alone of all the 
ancients, has been celebrated by h chorus of the 
greatest writers of the renovated world ; and the 
music has penetrated the caverns of society, and 
its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and 
superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, 
Tasso, Shakspeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, 
and the great writers of Our own age, have cele- 
brated the dominion of love, planting as it were 
trophies in the human mind of that sublimest 
victory over sensuality and force. The true rela- 
tion borne to each other by the sexes into which 
human kind is distributed, has become less mis- 
understood ; and if the error which confounded 
diversity with inequality of the powers of the two 
sexes has been partially recognised in the opinions 
and institutions of modern Europe, we owe this 
great benefit to the worship of which chivalry was 
the law, and poets the prophets. 

The poetry of Dante may be considered as the 
bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites 
the modern and ancient world. The distorted 
notions of invisible things which Dante and his 
rival Milton have idealised, are merely the mask 
and the mantle in which these great poets walk 
through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a 
difficult question to determine how far they were 
conscious of the distinction which must have sub- 
sisted in their minds between their own creeds and 
that of the people. Dante at least appears to 
| wish to mark the full extent of it by placing 



10 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY 



Riphauis, whom Virgil calfa jwti arimta MMBj in 

Paradise, and ulllW lillfl ■ most heretical caprice in 
his distribution of rewards and punishments. And 
Milton's poem contains within itself a philosophical 
refutation of that system, of which, by a strange 
and natural antithesis, it has been a chief popular 
support. Nothing can exceed the energy and 
magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed 
in " Paradise Lost." It is a mistake to suppose 
that he could ever have been intended for the 
popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, 
patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of de- 
vice to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, 
these things are evil ; and, although venial in a 
slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant ; although 
redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one 
subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his 
conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral 
being is as far superior to his God, as one who 
perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived 
to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is 
to one who in the cold security of undoubted 
triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his 
enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing 
him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but 
with the alleged design of exasperating him to 
deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated 
the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a 
violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral 
virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold 
neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive 
proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius. He 
mingled as it were the elements of ;human nature 
as colours upon a single pallet, and arranged them 
in the composition of his great picture according 
to the laws of epic truth ; that is, according to the 
laws of that principle by which a series of actions 
of the external universe and of intelligent and 
ethical beings is calculated to excite the sympa- 
thy of succeeding generations of mankind. The 
Divina Commedia and Paradise Lost have con- 
ferred upon modern mythology a systematic form ; 
and when change and time shall have added one 
more superstition to the mass of those which have 
arisen and decayed upon the earth, commentators 
will be learnedly employed in elucidating the 
religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly for- 
gotten because it will have been stamped with the 
eternity of genius. 

Homer was the first and Dante the second epic 
poet : that is, the second poet, the series of whose 
creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to 
the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the 
age in which he lived, and of the ages which fol- 
lowed it : developing itself in correspondence with 
their development. For Lucretius had limed the 



wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible 
world ; and Virgil, with a modesty that ill became 
his genius, had affected the fame of an imitator, 
even whilst he created anew all that he copied ; 
and none among the flock of mock-birds, though 
their notes were sweet, Apollonius Rhodius, Quin- 
tus Calaber, Nonnus, Lucan, Statius, or Claudian, 
have sought even to fulfil a single condition of 
epic truth. Milton was the third epic poet. For 
if the title of epic in its highest sense be refused 
to the JEneid, still less can it be conceded to 
the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, 
the Lusiad, or the Fairy Queen. 

Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated 
with the ancient religion of the civilized world ; 
and its spirit exists in their poetry probably in the 
same proportion as its forms survived in the un- 
reformed worship of modern Europe. The one 
preceded and the other followed the Reformation 
at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first 
religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him 
rather in the rudeness and acrimony, than in the 
boldness of his censures of papal usurpation. 
Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe ; 
he created a language, in itself music and persua- 
sion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. 
He was the congregator of those great spirits who 
presided over the resurrection of learning ; the 
Lucifer of that starry flock which in the thirteenth 
century shone forth from republican Italy, as from 
a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted world. 
His very words are instinct with spirit ; each is 
as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable 
thought ; and many yet he covered in the ashes of 
their birth, and pregnant with a lightning which 
has yet found no conductor. All high poetry is 
infinite ; it is as the first acorn, which contained all 
oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, 
and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never 
exposed. A great poem is a fountain for ever over- 
flowing with the waters of wisdom and delight ; and 
after one person and one age has exhausted all 
its divine effluence which their peculiar relations 
enable them to share, another and yet another 
succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, 
the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived 
delight. 

The age immediately succeeding to that of 
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, was characterized 
by a revival of painting, sculpture, and architecture. 
Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the 
superstructure of English literature is based upon 
the materials of Italian invention. 

But let us not be betrayed from a defence into 
a critical history of poetry and its influence on 
society. Be it enough to have pointed out the 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the 
word, upon their own and all succeeding times. 

But poets have beeu challenged to resign the 
civic crown to reasoners and mechanists, on another 
plea. It is admitted that the exercise of the 
imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged, 
that that of reason is more useful. Let us examine 
as the grounds of this distinction, what is here 
meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a general 
sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive 
and intelligent being seeks, and in which, when 
found, it acquiesces. There are two kinds of 
pleasure, one durable, universal and permanent ; 
the other transitory and particular. Utility may 
either express the means of producing the former 
or the latter. In the former sense, whatever 
strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the 
imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. 
But a narrower meaning may be assigned to the 
word utility, confining it to express that which 
banishes the importunity of the wants of our animal 
nature, the surrounding men with security of life, 
the dispersing the grosser delusions of superstition, 
and the conciliating such a degree of mutual for- 
bearance among men as may consist with the 
motives of personal advantage. 

Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this 
limited sense, have their appointed office in society. 
They follow the footsteps of poets, and copy the 
sketches of their creations into the book of common 
life. They make space, and give time. Their 
exertions are of the highest value, so long as they 
confine their administration of the concerns of the 
inferior powers of our nature within the limits due 
to the superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys 
gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as 
some of the French writers have defaced, the 
eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations 
of men. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the 
political economist combines labour, let them be- 
ware that their speculations, for want of corre- 
spondence with those first principles which belong 
to the imagination, do not tend, as they have in 
modern England, to exasperate at once the ex- 
tremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified 
the saying, " To him that hath, more shall be 
given ; and from him that hath not, the little that 
he hath shall be taken away." The rich have 
become richer, and the poor have become poorer ; 
and the vessel of the state is driven between the 
Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. 
Such are the effects which must ever flow from an 
unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty. 

It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest 
sense ; the definition involving a number of apparent 
paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of 



harmony in the constitution of human nature, the 
pain of the inferior is frequently connected with 
the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. 
Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often 
the chosen expressions of an approximation to the 
highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fietion 
depends on this principle ; tragedy delights by 
affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in 
pain. This is the source also of the melancholy 
which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. 
The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the 
pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, 
" It is better to go to the house of mourning, than 
to the house of mirth." Not that this highest 
species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain. 
The delight of love and friendship, the ecstacy of 
the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception 
and still more of the creation of poetry, is often 
wholly unalloyed. 

The production and assurance of pleasure in this 
highest sense is true utility. Those who produce 
and preserve this pleasure are poets or poetical 
philosophers. 

The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, 
Rousseau,* and their disciples, in favour of oppressed 
and deluded humanity, are entitled to the gratitude 
of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree 
of moral and intellectual improvement which the 
world would have exhibited, had they never lived. 
A little more nonsense would have been talked for 
a century or two ; and perhaps a few more men, 
women, and children, burnt as heretics. We might 
not at this moment have been congratulating each 
other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain. 
But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what 
would have - Deen the moral condition of the world 
if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, 
Shakspeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton, 
had ever existed ; if Raphael and Michael Angelo 
had never been born ; if the Hebrew poetry had 
never been translated ; if a revival of the study of 
Greek literature had never taken place ; if no 
monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed 
down to us ; and if the poetry of the religion of 
the ancient world had been extinguished together 
with its belief. The human mind could never, 
except by the intervention of these excitements, 
have been awakened to the invention of the grosser 
sciences, and that application of analytical reason- 
ing to the aberrations of society, which it is now 
attempted to exalt over the direct expression of 
the inventive and creative faculty itself. 

We have more moral, political and historical 

* Although Rousseau has heen thus classed, he was 
essentially a poet The others, even Voltaire, were mere 
reasoners. 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



wisdom, than WO know how to reduce into prac- 
tice ; wo havo more scientific and economical 

knowledge than can be accommodated to the just 

distribution of the produce which it multiplies. 
The poetry in these systems of thought, is con- 
cealed by the accumulation of facts and calcu- 
lating processes. There is no want of knowledge 
respecting what is wisest and best in morals, 
government, and political economy, or at least, 
what is wiser and better than what men now 
practise and endure. But we let "/ dare not 
wait upon / would, like the poor cat in the 
adage.*' We want the creative faculty to imagine 
that which we know ; we want the generous 
impulse to act that which we imagine ; we want 
the poetry of life : our calculations have outrun 
conception ; we have eaten more than we can 
digest. The cultivation of those sciences which 
have enlarged the limits of the empire of man 
over the external world, has, for want of the 
poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those 
of the internal world ; and man, having enslaved 
the elements, remains himself a slave. To what 
but a cultivation of the mechanical arts in a 
degree disproportioued to the presence of the 
creative faculty, which is the basis of all know- 
ledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all invention 
for abridging and combining labour, to the exas- 
peration of the inequality of mankind ? From 
what other cause has it arisen that the discoveries 
which should have lightened, have added a weight 
to the curse imposed on Adam ? Poetry, and the 
principle of Self, of which money is the visible 
incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the 
world. 

The functions of the poetical faculty are two- 
fold ; by one it creates new materials of know- 
ledge, and power and pleasure ; by the other it 
engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and 
arrange them according to a certain rhythm and 
order which may be called the beautiful and the 
good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to 
be desired than at periods when, from an excess 
of the selfish and calculating principle, the accu- 
mulation of the materials of external life exceed 
the quantity of the power of assimilating them to 
the internal laws of human nature. The body 
has then become too unwieldy for that which 
animates it. 

Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at 
once the centre and circumference of knowledge ; 
it is that which comprehends all science, and that 
to which all science must be referred. It is at 
the same time the root and blossom of all other 
systems of thought ; it is that from which all 
spring, and that which adorns all ; and that 



which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, 
and withholds from the barren world the nourish* 
nient and the succession of the scions of the tree 
of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface 
and bloom of all things ; it is as the odour and 
the colour of the rose to the texture of the 
elements which compose it, as the form and splen- 
dour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy 
and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriot- 
ism, friendship — what were the scenery of this 
beautiful universe which we inhabit ; what were 
our consolations on this side of the grave — and 
what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry 
did not ascend to bring light and fire from' thtrse 
eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of 
calculation dare not ever soar ? Poetry is not 
like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to 
the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 
" I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even 
cannot say it ; for the mind in creation is as a 
fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an 
inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness ; 
this power arises from within, like the colour of a 
flower which fades and changes as it is developed, 
and the conscious portions of our natures are 
unprophetic either of its approach or its depar- 
ture. Could this influence be durable in its 
original purity and force, it is impossible to pre- 
dict the greatness of the results ; but when com- 
position begins, inspiration is already on the de- 
cline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever 
been communicated to the world is probably a 
feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the 
poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present 
day, whether it is not an error to assert that the 
finest passages of poetry are produced by labour 
and study. The toil and the delay recommended 
by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no 
more than a careful observation of the inspired 
moments, and an artificial connexion of the spaces 
between their suggestions by the intertexture of 
conventional expressions ; a necessity only im- 
posed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty 
itself ; for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as 
a whole before he executed it in portions. We 
have his own authority also for the muse having 
"dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song." 
And let this be an answer to those who would 
allege the fifty-six various readings of the first 
line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so 
produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. 
This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty 
is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial 
arts ; a great statue or picture grows under the 
power of the artist as a child in the mother's 
womb ; and the very mind which directs the 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



13 



hands in formation is incapable of accounting to 

itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media 
of the process. 

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest 
moments of the happiest and best minds. We 
are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and 
feeling sometimes associated with place or person, 
sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and 
always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, 
but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: 
so that even in the desire and the regret they 
leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating 
as it does in the nature of its object. It is as 
it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature 
through our own ; but its footsteps are like those 
of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm 
erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the 
wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corre- 
sponding conditions of being are experienced prin- 
cipally by those of the most delicate sensibility 
and the most enlarged imagination ; and the state 
of mind produced by them is at war with every 
base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, 
patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked 
with such emotions ; and whilst they last, self 
appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. 
Poets are not only subject to these experiences 
as spirits of the most refined organisation, but 
they can colour all that they combine with the 
evanescent hues of this ethereal world ; a word, a 
trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, 
will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in 
those who have ever experienced these emotions, 
the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the 
past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best 
and most beautilul in the world ; it arrests the 
vanishing apparitions which haunt the interluna- 
tions of life, and veiling them, or in language or in 
form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing 
sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom 
their sisters abide — abide, because there is no 
portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit 
which they inhabit into the universe of things. 
Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the 
divinity in man. 

Poetry turns all things to loveliness ; it exalts 
the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it 
adds beauty to that which is most deformed ; it 
marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, 
eternity and change ; it subdues to union under 
its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It trans- 
mutes all that it touches, and every form moving 
within the radiance of its presence is changed 
by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the 
spirit which it breathes : its secret alchemy turns 
to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow 



from death through life ; it strips the veil of 
familiarity from the world* and lays bare the 
naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of 
its forms. 

All things exist as they are perceived ; at least 
in relation to the percipient. " The mind is its 
own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, 
a hell of heaven." But poetry defeats the curse 
which binds us to be subjected to the accident of 
surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads 
its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's dark 
veil from before the scene of things, it equally 
creates for us a being within our being. It makes 
us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar 
world is a chaos. It reproduces the common uni- 
verse of which we are portions and percipients, and 
it purges from our inward sight the film of fami- 
liarity which obscures from us the wonder of our 
being. It compels us to feel that which we per- 
ceive, and to imagine that which we know. It 
creates anew the universe, after it has been annihi- 
lated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions 
blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and 
true words of Tasso : Non merita norne di creator e, 
se non Iddio ed il Poeta. 

A poet, as he is the author to others of the 
highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he 
ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the 
wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his 
glory, let time be challenged to declare whether 
the fame of any other institutor of human life be 
comparable to that of a poet. That he is the 
wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he 
is a poet, is equally incontrovertible : the greatest 
poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, or 
the most consummate prudence, and, if we would 
look into the interior of their lives, the most for- 
tunate of men : and the exceptions, as they regard 
those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high 
yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration 
to confine rather than destroy the rule. Let us 
for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular 
breath, and usurping and uniting in our own per- 
sons the incompatible characters of accuser, wit- 
ness, judge and executioner, let us decide without 
trial, testimony, or form, that certain motives of 
those who are " there sitting where we dare not 
soar," are reprehensible. Let us assume that 
Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, 
that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a 
madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that 
Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet 
laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of 
our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has 
done ample justice to the great names now referred 
to. Their errors have been weighed and found to 



14 



A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 



bane been dust in the balance ; it" their sins « were 
as Boeriet, they are now white as snow :" the} have 
boon washed in the blood of the mediator and 
redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous 
chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime 
have boon confused in the contemporary calum- 
nies against poetry and poets ; consider how 
littlo is, as it appears — or appears, as it is ; look 
to your own motives, and judge not, lest ye be 
judged. 

Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect 
from logic, that it is not subject to the control of 
the active powers of the mind, and that its birth 
and recurrence have no necessary connexion with 
the consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to 
determine that these are the necessary conditions 
of all mental causation, when mental effects are 
experienced unsusceptible of being referred to 
them. The frequent recurrence of the poetical 
power, it is obvious to suppose, may produce in the 
mind a habit of order and harmony correlative with 
its own nature and with its effects upon other 
minds. But in the intervals of inspiration, and they 
may be frequent without being durable, a poet be- 
comes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden re- 
flux of the influences under which others habitually 
live. But as he is more delicately organised than 
other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both 
his own and that of others, in a degree unknown to 
them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other 
with an ardour proportioned to this difference. 
And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when 
he neglects to observe the circumstances under 
which these objects of universal pursuit and flight 
have disguised themselves in one another's gar- 
ments. 

But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, 
and thus cruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and the 
passions purely evil, have never formed any per- 
tion of the popular imputations on the lives of 
poets. 

I have thought it most favourable to the cause 
of truth to set down these remarks according to 
the order in which they were suggested to my mind, 
by a consideration of the subject itself, instead 
of observing the formality of a polemical reply ; but 
if the view which they contain be just, they will be 
found to involve a refutation of the arguers against 
poetry, so far at least as regards the first division 
of the subject. I can readily conjecture what 
should have moved the gall of some learned and 
intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versi- 
fiers ; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to 
be stunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of 
the day. Bavius and Msevius undoubtedly are, as 
rhey ever were, insufferable persons. But it be- 



longs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather 
than confound. 

The first part of these remarks has related to 
poetry in its elements and principles ; and it has 
been shown, as well as the narrow limits assigned 
them would permit, that what is called poetry, in a 
restricted sense, has a common source with all 
other forms of order and of beauty, according to 
which the materials of human life are susceptible 
of being arranged, and which is poetry in an uni- 
versal sense. 

The second part will have for its object an appli- 
cation of these principles to the present state of 
the cultivation of poetry, and a defence of the 
attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners 
and opinions, and compel them into a subordina- 
tion to the imaginative and creative faculty. For* 
the literature of England, an energetic development 
of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great 
and free development of the national will, has arisen 
as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low- 
thoughted envy which would undervalue contem- 
porary merit, our own will be a memorable age in 
intellectual achievements, and we live among such 
philosophers and poets as surpass beyond compa- 
rison any who have appeared since the last national 
struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most 
unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the 
awakening of a great people to work a beneficial 
change hi opinion or institution, is poetry. At 
such periods there is an accumulation of the power 
of communicating and receiving intense and im- 
passioned conceptions respecting man and nature. 
The persons in whom this power resides, may often, 
as far as regards many portions of their nature, 
have little apparent correspondence with that spirit 
of good of which they are the ministers. But 
even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet 
compelled to serve, the power which is seated on 
the throne of their own soul. It is impossible to 
read the compositions of the most celebrated 
writers of the present day without being startled 
with the electric life which burns within their 
words. They measure the circumference and sound 
the depths of human nature with a comprehensive 
and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves 
perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its mani- 
festations ; for it is less their spirit than the spirit 
of the age. Poets are 'the hierophants of an un- 
apprehended inspiration ; the mirrors of the gigan- 
tic shadows which futurity casts upon the present ; 
the words which express what they understand 
not ; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel 
not what they inspire ; the influence which is moved 
not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged 
legislators of the world. 



ESSAY 

ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS, AND THE MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS. 



<& Jfrasment* 



The period which intervened between the birth 
of Pericles and the death of Aristotle, is undoubt- 
edly, whether considered in itself or with refer- 
ence to the effects which it has produced upon the 
subsequent destinies of civilised man, the most 
memorable in the history of the world. What 
was the combination of moral and political circum- 
stances which produced so unparalleled a progress 
during that period in literature and the arts ; — 
why that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so 
soon received a check, and became retrograde, — 
are problems left to the wonder and conjecture of 
posterity. The wrecks and fragments of those 
subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine 
statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and 
perfection of the whole. Their very language — a 
type of the understandings of which it was the 
creation and the image — in variety, in simplicity, 
in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other 
language of the western world. Their sculptures 
are such as we, in our presumption, assume to be 
the models of ideal truth and beauty, and to which 
no artist of modern times can produce forms in 
any degree comparable. Their paintings, according 
to Pliny and Pausanias, were full of delicacy and 
harmony ; and some even were powerfully pathe- 
tic, so as to awaken, like tender music or tragic 
poetry, the most overwhelming emotions. We 
are accustomed to conceive the painters of the 
sixteenth century, as those who have brought their 
art to the highest perfection, probably because 
none of the ancient paintings have been preserved. 
For all the inventive arts maintain, as it were, a 
sympathetic connexion between each other, being 
no more than various expressions of one internal 
power, modified by different circumstances, either 
of an individual, or of society ; and the paintings 
of that period would probably bear the same rela- 
tion as is confessedly borne by the sculptures to all 
succeeding ones. Of their music we know little ; 
but the effects which it is said to have produced, 



* Shelley named this Essay, " A Discourse on the Man- 
ners of the Ancients, relative to the subject of Love." It 
was intended to be a commentary on the Symposium, or 
Banquet of Plato, but it breaks off at the moment when 
the main subject is about to be discussed. 



whether they be attributed to the skill of the 
composer, or the sensibility of his audience, are 
far more powerful than any which we experience 
from the music of our own times ; and if, indeed, 
the melody of their compositions were more 
tender and delicate, and inspiring, than the 
melodies of some modern European nations, 
their superiority in this art must have been some- 
thing wonderful, and wholly beyond conception. 

Their poetry seems to maintain a very high, 
though not so disproportionate a rank, in the com- 
parison. Perhaps Shakspeare, from the variety and 
comprehension of his genius, is to be considered, 
on the whole, as the greatest individual mind, of 
which we have specimens remaining. Perhaps 
Dante created imaginations of greater loveliness 
and energy than any that are to be found in the 
ancient literature of Greece. Perhaps nothing has 
been discovered in the fragments of the Greek 
lyric poets equivalent to the sublime and chivalric 
sensibility of Petrarch. — But, as a poet, Homer 
must be acknowledged to excel Shakspeare in the 
truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the 
satisfying completeness of his images, their exact 
fitness to the illustration, and to that to which 
they belong. Nor could Dante, deficient in con- 
duct, plan, nature, variety, and temperance, have 
been brought into comparison with these men, but 
for those fortunate isles, laden with golden fruit, 
which alone could tempt any one to embark in the 
misty ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction. 

But, omitting the comparison of individual 
minds, which can afford no general inference, how 
superior was the spirit and system of their poetry 
to that of any other period. So that, had any 
other genius equal in other respects to the greatest 
that ever enlightened the world, arisen in that age, 
he would have been superior to all, from this cir- 
cumstance alone — that his conceptions would have 
assumed a more harmonious and perfect form. 
For it is worthy of observation, that whatever the 
poets of that age produced is as harmonious and 
perfect as possible. If a drama, for instance, were 
the composition of a person of inferior talent, it 
was still homogeneous and free from inequali- 
ties ; it was a whole, consistent with itself. The 



16 



ON THE LITERATURE, ETC., OF THE ATHENIANS. 



compositions of great minds bore throughout the 

sustained stamp of their greatness. In the poetry of 
succeeding ages the expectations are often exalted 

00 lea roan wings, and fall, too much disappointed 
to give a memory and a name to tile oblivious 
pool in which they fell. 

In phyBioal knowledge Aristotle and Theophras- 
tos had already — no doubt assisted by the labours 
of those of their predecessors whom they criticise 
- made advances worthy of the maturity of science. 
The astonishing invention of geometry, that series 
of discoveries which have enabled man to command 
the elements and foresee future events, before the 
subjects of his ignorant wonder, and which have 
opened as it were the doors of the mysteries of 
nature, had already been brought to great perfec- 
tion. Metaphysics, the science of man's intimate 
nature, and logic, or the grammar and elementary 
principles of that science, received from the 
latter philosophers of the Periclean age a firm 
basis. All our more exact philosophy is built upon 
the labours of these great men, and many of the 
words which we employ in metaphysical distinc- 
tions were invented by them to give accuracy and 
system to their reasonings. The science of morals, 
or the voluntary conduct of men in relation to 
themselves or others, dates from this epoch. How 
inexpressibly bolder and more pure were the doc- 
trines of those great men, in comparison with the 
timid maxims which prevail in the writings of the 
most esteemed modern moralists. They were such 
as Phocion, and Epaminondas, and Timoleon, who 
forme i themselves on their influence, were to the 
wretched heroes of our own age. 

Their political and religious institutions are 
more difficult to bring into comparison with those 
of other times. A summary idea may be formed 
of the worth of any political and religious system, 
by observing the comparative degree of happiness 
and of intellect produced under its influence. And 
whilst many institutions and opinions, which in 
ancient Greece were obstacles to the improvement 
of the human race, have been abolished among 
modern nations, how many pernicious superstitions 
and new contrivances of misrule, and unheard-of 
complications of public mischief, have not been 
invented among them by the ever-watchful spirit 
of avarice and tyranny. 

The modern nations of the civilised world owe 
the progress which they have made — as well in those 
physical sciences in which they have already 
excelled their masters, as in the moral and intel- 
lectual inquiries, in which, with all the advantage 
of the experience of the latter, it can scarcely be 
said that they have yet equalled them, — to what is 
called the revival of learning ; that is, the study 



of the writers of the age which preceded and 
immediately followed the government of Pericles, 
or of subsequent writers, who were, so to speak, the 
rivers flowing from those immortal fountains. And 
though there seems to be a principle in the modern 
world, which, should circumstances analogous to 
those which modelled the intellectual resources of 
the age to which we refer, into so harmonious a 
proportion, again arise, would arrest and perpetuate 
them, and consign their results to a more equal, 
extensive, and lasting improvement of the condition 
of man — though justice and the true meaning of 
human society are, if not more accurately, more 
generally understood ; though perhaps men know 
more, and therefore are more, as a mass, yet this 
principle has never been called into action, and 
requires indeed a universal and almost appalling 
change in the system of existing things. The 
study of modern history is the study of kings, 
financiers, statesmen, and priests. The history of 
ancient Greece is the study of legislators, philoso- 
phers, and poets ; it is the history of men, compared 
with the history of titles. What the Greeks were, 
was a reality, not a promise. And what we are 
and hope to be, is derived, as it were, from the 
influence and inspiration of these glorious genera- 
tions. 

Whatever tends to afford a further illustration 
of the manners and opinions of those to whom we 
owe so much, and who were perhaps, on the whole, 
the most perfect specimens of humanity of whom 
we have authentic record, were infinitely valuable. 
Let us see their errors, their weaknesses, their 
daily actions, their familiar conversation, and catch 
the tone of their society. When we discover how 
far the most admirable community ever framed, was 
removed from that perfection to which human 
society is impelled by some active power within 
each bosom, to aspire, how great ought to be our 
hopes, how resolute our struggles. For the Greeks 
of the Periclean age were widely different from us. 
It is to be lamented that no modern writer has 
hitherto dared to show them precisely as they 
were. Barthelemi cannot be denied the praise of 
industry and system ; but he never forgets that he 
is a Christian and a Frenchman. Wieland, in his 
dehghtful novels, makes indeed a very tolerable 
Pagan, but cherishes too many political prejudices, 
and refrains from diminishing the interest of his 
romances by painting sentiments in which no 
European of modern times can possibly sympa- 
thise. There is no book which shows the Greeks 
precisely as they were ; they seem all written for 
children, with the caution that no practice or 
sentiment, highly inconsistent with our present 
manners, should be mentioned, lest those manners 



ON THE LITERATURE, ETC., OF THE ATHENIANS. 



17 



should receive outrage ami violation. But there 
are many to whom the Greek language is inacces- 
sible, who ought not to be excluded by this prudery 
from possessing an exact and comprehensive con- 
ception of the history of man ; for there is no 
knowledge concerning what man has been and may 
be, from partaking of which a person can depart, 
without becoming in some degree more philoso- 
phical, tolerant, and just. 

One of the chief distinctions between the manners 
of ancient Greece and modern Europe, consisted 
in the regulations and the sentiments respecting 
sexual intercourse. Whether this difference arises 
from some imperfect influence of the doctrines of 
Jesus Christ, who alleges the absolute and uncon- 
ditional equality of all human beings, or from the 
institutions of chivalry, or from a certain funda- 
mental difference of physical nature existing in the 
Celts, or from a combination of all or any of these 
causes, acting on each other, is a question worthy 
of voluminous investigation. The fact is, that the 
modern Europeans have in this circumstance, and 
in the abolition of slavery, made an improvement 
the most decisive in the regulation of human 
society ; and all the virtue and the wisdom of the 
Periclean age arose under other institutions, in 
spite of the diminution which personal slavery and 
the inferiority of women, recognised by law and 
opinion, must have produced in the delicacy, the 
strength, the comprehensiveness, and the accuracy 
of their conceptions, in moral, political, and meta- 
physical science, and perhaps in every other art 
and science. 

The women, thus degraded, became such as it 
was expected they would become. They possessed, 
except with extraordinary exceptions, the habits 
and the qualities of slaves. They were probably not 
extremely beautiful ; at least there was no such dis- 
proportion in the attractions of the external form 
between the female and male sex among the Greeks, 
as exists among the modern Europeans. They were 
certainly devoid of that moral and intellectual 
loveliness with which the acquisition of knowledge 
and the cultivation of sentiment animates, as with 
another life of overpowering grace, the lineaments 
and the gestures of every form which they inhabit. 
Their eyes could not have been deep and intricate 
from the workings of the mind, and could have 
entangled no heart in soul-enwoven labyrinths. 

Let it not be imagined that because the Greeks 
were deprived of its legitimate object, they were 
incapable of sentimental love ; and that this passion 
is the mere child of chivalry and the literature of 
modern times. This object, or its archetype, for- 
ever exists in the mind, which selects among those 



who resemble it, that which most resembles it ; and 
instinctively fills up the interstices of the imperfect 
image, in the same maimer as the imagination 
moulds and completes the shapes in clouds, or in 
the fire, into the resemblances of whatever form, 
animal, building, &c, happens to be present to it. 
Man is in his wildest state a social being : a certain 
degree of civilisation and refinement ever produces 
the w r ant of sympathies still more intimate and 
complete ; and the gratification of the senses is no 
longer all that is sought in sexual connexion. It 
soon becomes a very small part of that profound 
and complicated sentiment, which we call love, 
which is rather the universal thirst for a communion 
not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, 
intellectual, imaginative and sensitive ; and which, 
when individualised, becomes an imperious neces- 
sity, only to be satisfied by the complete or 
partial, actual or supposed, fulfilment of its claims. 
This want grows more powerful in proportion to 
the development wliich our nature receives from 
civilisation ; for man never ceases to be a social being. 
The sexual impulse, which is only one, and often a 
small part of those claims, serves, from its obVious 
and external nature, as a kind of type or expres- 
sion of the rest, a common basis, an acknowledged 
and risible link. Still it is a claim which even 
derives a strength not its own from the accessory 
circumstances which surround it, and one which 
our nature thirsts to satisfy. To estimate this, 
observe the degree of intensity and durability of 
the love of the male towards the female in animals 
and savages ; and acknowledge all the duration and 
intensity observable in the love of civilised beings 
beyond that of savages to be produced from other 
causesT In the susceptibility of the external senses 
there is probably no important difference. 

Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one 
half of the human race, received the highest culti- 
vation and refinement ; whilst the other, so far as 
intellect is concerned, were educated as slaves, and 
were raised but few degrees in all that related to 
moral or intellectual excellence above the condi- 
tion of savages. The gradations in the society of 
man present us with a slow improvement in this 
respect. The Roman women held a higher consi- 
deration in society, and were esteemed almost as 
the equal partners with their husbands in the regu- 
lation of domestic economy and the education of 
their children. The practices and customs of mo- 
dern Europe are essentially different from and in- 
comparably less pernicious than either, however 
remote from what an enlightened mind cannot fail 
to desire as the future destiny of human beings. 



ON THE SYMPOSIUM, 

OR PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 

21 ^fragment. 



The dialogue entitled " The Banquet," was 
selected by the translator as the most beautiful 
and perfect among all the works of Plato*. He 
despairs of having communicated to the English 
language any portion of the surpassing graces of 
the composition, or having done more than present 
an imperfect shadow of the language and the sen- 
timent of this astonishing production. 

Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek 
philosophers, and from, or, rather, perhaps through 
him, his master Socrates, have proceeded those 
emanations of moral and metaphysical know- 
ledge, on which a long series and an incalculable 
variety of popular superstitions have sheltered 
their absurdities from the slow contempt of man- 
kind. Plato exhibits the rare union of close and 
subtle logic, with the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry, 
melted by the splendour and harmony of his periods 
into one irresistible stream of musical impres- 
sions, which hurry the persuasions onward, as in a 
breathless career. His language is that of an 
immortal spirit, rather than a man. Lord Bacon 
is, perhaps, the only writer, who, in these parti- 
culars, can be compared with him : his imitator, 
Cicero, sinks in the comparison into an ape mocking 
the gestures of a man. His views into the nature 

* The Republic, though replete with considerable errors 
of speculation, is, indeed, the greatest repository of impor- 
tant truths of all the works of Plato. This, perhaps, is 
because it is the longest. He first, and perhaps last, main- 
tained that a state ought to be governed, not by the weal- 
thiest, or the most ambitious, or the most cunning, but by 
the wisest ; the method of selecting such rulers, and the 
laws by which such a selection is made, must correspond 
with and arise out of the moral freedom and refinement 
of the people. 



of mind and existence are often obscure, only be- 
cause they are profound ; and though his theories 
respecting the government of the world, and the 
elementary laws of moral action, are not always 
correct, yet there is scarcely any of his treatises 
which do not, however stained by puerile sophisms, 
contain the most remarkable intuitions into all 
that can be the subject of the human mind. His 
excellence consists especially in intuition, and it is 
this faculty which raises him far above Aristotle, 
whose genius, though vivid and various, is obscure 
in comparison with that of Plato. 

The dialogue entitled the " Banquet," is called 
EpwTiKos, or a Discussion upon Love, and is sup- 
posed to have taken place at the house of Agathon, 
at one of a series of festivals given by that poet, 
on the occasion of his gaining the prize of 
tragedy at the Dionysiaca. The account of the 
debate on this occasion is supposed to have been 
given by Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, many 
years after it had taken place, to a companion who 
was curious to hear it. This Apollodorus appears, 
both from the style in which he is represented in 
this piece, as well as from a passage in the Phaedon, 
to have been a person of an impassioned and 
enthusiastic disposition ; to borrow an image from 
the Italian painters, he seems to have been the 
St. John of the Socratic group. The drama (for so 
the lively distinction of character and the various 
and well- wrought circumstances of the story almost 
entitle it to be called) begins by Socrates persuad- 
ing Aristodemus to sup at Agathon's, uninvited. 
The whole of this introduction affords the most 
livery conception of refined Athenian manners. 



[unfinished. 



THE BANQUET. 

(Translate!) from Plato. 



THE PERSONS OP THE DIALOGUE. 

LPOLLODORUS, A FRIEND OF APOLLODORUS, GLAUCO, ARISTODEMUS, SOCRATES, AGATHON, FH^EDRUS, PAI'iA VI A- 
BRYXIMACHUS, ARISTOPHANES, DIOTIMA, AI/CIBIADES. 



Apollodoms. I think that the subject of your 
inquiries is still fresh in my memory ; for yester- 
day, as I chanced to be returning home from Pha- 
leros, one of my acquaintance, seeing me before 
him, called out to me from a distance, jokingly, 
" Apollodorus, you Phalerian, will you not wait a 
minute ? " — I waited for him, and as soon as he 
overtook me, " I bave just been looking for you, 
Apollodorus," he said, " for I wish to hear what 
those discussions were on Love, which took place 
at the party, when Agathon, Socrates, Alcibiades, 
and some others, met at supper. Some one who 
heard it from Phoenix, the son of Philip, told me 
that you could give a full account, but he could 
relate nothing distinctly himself. Relate to me, 
then, I entreat you, all the circumstances. I know 
you are a faithful reporter of the discussions of 
your friends ; but, first tell me, were you present 
at the party or not ? " 

" Your informant," I replied, " seems to have 
given you no very clear idea of what you wish to 
hear, if he thinks that these discussions took place 
so lately as that I could have been of the party." — 
" Indeed I thought so," replied he. — * For how," 
said I, * Glauco ! could I have been present ? 
Do you not know that Agathon has been absent 
from the city many years ? But, since I began to 
converse with Socrates, and to observe each day 
all his words and actions, three years are scarcely 
past. Before this time I wandered about wherever 
it might chance, thinking that I did something, 
but being, in truth, a most miserable wretch, not 
less than you are now, who believe that you ought 
to do anything rather than practise the love of 
wisdom." — "Do not cavil," interrupted Glauco, 
" but tell me, when did this party take place ? " 

" Whilst we were yet children," I replied, "when 
Agathon first gained the prize of Tragedy, and the 
day after that on which he and the chorus made 
sacrifices in celebration of their success." — " A long 
time ago, it seems. But who told you all the 
circumstances of the discussion ? Did you hear 
them from Socrates himself \ " " No, by Jupiter ! 



But from the same person from whom Phoenix had 
his information, one Aristodemus, a Cydathenean, 
— a little man who always went about without san- 
dals. He was present at this feast, being, I believe, 
more than any of his contemporaries, a lover and 
admirer of Socrates. 1 have questioned Socrates 
concerning some of the circumstances of this nar- 
ration, who confirms all that I have heard from 
Aristodemus." — " Why, then," said Glauco, " why 
not relate them, as we walk, to me ? The road to 
the city is every way convenient, both for those 
who listen and those who speak." 

Thus as we walked, I gave him some account of 
those discussions concerning Love ; since, as I said 
before, I remember them with sufficient accuracy. 
If I am required to relate them also to you, that 
shall willingly be done ; for, whensoever either I 
I myself talk of philosophy, or listen to others 
talking of it, in addition to the improvement which 
I conceive there arises from such conversation, I 
am delighted beyond measure ; but whenever I 
hear your discussions about monied men and great 
proprietors, I am weighed down with grief, and 
pity you, who, doing nothing, believe that you are 
doing something. Perhaps you think that I am a 
miserable wretch ; and, indeed, I believe that you 
think truly. I do not think, but well know, that 
you are miserable. 

Companion. You are always the same, Apollo- 
dorus — always saying some ill of yourself and 
others. Indeed, you seem to me to thiuk every 
one miserable except Socrates, beginning with your- 
self. I do not know what could have entitled you 
to the surname of the " Madman," for, I am sure, 
you are consistent enough, for ever inveighing with 
bitterness against yourself and all others, except 
Socrates. 

Apollodorus. My dear friend, it is manifest that 
I am out of my wits from this alone — that I have 
such opinions as you describe concerning myself 
and you. 

Companion. It is not worth while, Apollodorus, 
to dispute now about these things ; but do what I 



20 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



mtreat you, and relate to us what were these 
discussions. 

ApoUodorm. They were such as I will proceed 
to tell you. Hut let me attempt to relate them in 
the order which Aristodemus observed in relating 
them to me. He said that he met Socrates washed, 
and, contrary to his usual custom, sandalled, and 
having inquired whither he went so gaily dressed, 
Socrates replied, " I am going to sup at Agathon's ; 
yesterday 1 avoided it, disliking the crowd, which 
would attend at the prize sacrifices then celebrated ; 
to-day I promised to be there, and I made myself 
so gay, because one ought to be beautiful to approach 
one who is beautiful. But you, Aristodemus, what 
think you of coming uninvited to supper ? " "I will 
do," he replied, " as you command." " Follow 
then, that we may, by changing its application, 
disarm that proverb, which says, To the feasts of 
the good, the good come imiwoited. Homer, indeed, 
seems not only to destroy, but to outrage the pro- 
verb ; for, describing Agamemnon as excellent in 
battle, and Menelaus but a faint-hearted warrior, he 
represents Menelaus as coming uninvited to the 
feast of one better and braver than himself." — 
Aristodemus hearing this, said, "I also am in some 
danger, Socrates, not as you say, but according to 
Homer, of approaching like an unworthy inferior 
the banquet of one more wise and excellent than 
myself. Will you not, then, make some excuse 
for me ? for, I shall not confess that I came unin- 
vited, but shall say that I was invited by you." — 
" As we walk together," said Socrates, a we will 
consider together what excuse to make — but let 
us go." 

Thus discoursing, they proceeded. But as they 
walked, Socrates, engaged in some deep contem- 
plation, slackened his pace, and, observing Aris- 
todemus waiting for him, he desired him to go on 
before. When Aristodemus arrived at Agathon s 
house he found the door open, and it occurred, 
somewhat comically, that a slave met him at the 
vestibule, and conducted him where he found the 
guests already reclined. As soon as Agathon saw 
him, " You arrive just in time to sup with us, 
Aristodemus," he said ; " if you have any other 
purpose in your visit, defer it to a better opportunity. 
I was looking for you yesterday, to invite you to be 
of our party ; I could not find you anywhere. But 
how is it that you do not bring Socrates with 
you % " 

But he turning round, and not seeing Socrates 
behind him, said to Agathon, « I just came hither 
in his company, being invited by him to sup with 
you."— "You did well," replied Agathon, "to 
come ; but where is Socrates ? "— " He just now 
came hither behind me ; I myself wonder where 



he ean be." — ** Go and look, boy," said Agathon, 
" and bring Socrates in ; meanwhile, you, Aristo- 
demus, recline there near Kryximachus." And he 
bade a slave wash his feet that he might recline. 
Another slave, meanwhile, brought word that 
Socrates had retired into a neighbouring vestibule, 
where he stood, and, in spite of his message, re- 
fused to come in. — " What absurdity you talk ! " 
cried Agathon ; "call him, and do not leave him till 
he comes." — " Let him alone, by all means," 
said Aristodemus ; " it is customary with him some- 
times to retire in this way and stand wherever it 
may chance. He will come presently, I do not 
doubt ; do not disturb him." — " Well, be it as you 
will," said Agathon ; " as it is, you boys, bring 
supper for the rest ; put before us what you will, 
for I resolved that there should be no master of 
the feast. Consider me and these my friends, as 
guests, whom you have invited to supper, and serve 
them so that we may commend you." 

After this they began supper, but Socrates did 
not come in. Agathon ordered him to be called, 
but Aristodemus perpetually forbade it. At last 
he came in, much about the middle of supper, 
not having delayed so long as was his custom. 
Agathon (who happened to be reclining at the 
end of the table, and alone,) said as he entered, 
" Come hither^ Socrates, and sit down by me ; so 
that by the mere touch of one so wise as you are, 
I may enjoy the fruit of your meditations in the 
vestibule ; for, I well know, you would not have 
departed till you had discovered and secured it." 

Socrates, having sate down as he was desired, 
replied, " It would be well, Agathon, if wisdom 
were of such a nature, as that when we touched 
each other, it would overflow of its own accord, 
from him who possesses much to him who pos- 
sesses little ; like the water in the two chalices, 
which will flow through a flock of wool from the 
fuller into the emptier, until both are equal. If 
wisdom had this property, I should esteem myself 
most fortunate in reclining near to you. I should 
thus soon be filled, I think, with the most beautiful 
and various wisdom. Mine, indeed, is something 
obscure, and doubtful, and dreamlike. But yours 
is radiant, and has been crowned with amplest 
reward ; for though you are yet so young, it shone 
forth from you, and became so manifest yesterday, 
that more than thirty thousand Greeks can bear 
testimony to its excellence and loveliness." — 
" You are laughing at me, Socrates," said Aga- 
thon ; " but you and I will decide this controversy 
about wisdom by and by, taking Bacchus for our 
judge. At present turn to your supper." 

After Socrates and the rest had finished supper, 
and had reclined back on their couches, and the 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



'21 



libations had been poured forth, and they had 
sung hymns to the god, and all other rites which 
are customary had been performed, they turned 
to drinking. Then Pausanias made this kind of 
proposal. " Come, my friends," said he, " in what 
manner will it be pleasautest for us to drink ? I 
must confess to you that, in reality, I am not very 
well from the wine we drank last night and I have 
need of some intermission. I suspect that most of 
you are in the same condition, for you were here 
yesterday. Now, consider how we shall drink 
most easily and comfortably." 

" 'Tis a good proposal, Pausanias," said Aristo- 
phanes, " to contrive, in some way or other, to 
place moderation in our cups. I was one of those 
who were drenched last night." — Eryximachus, 
the son of Acumenius, hearing this, said : " I am 
of your opinion ; I only wish to know one thing — 
whether Agathon is in the humour for hard drink- 
ing!" — "Not at all," replied Agathon ; "I confess 
that I am not able to drink much this evening." — 
" It is an excellent thing for us," replied Eryxima- 
chus — "I mean myself, Aristodemus, Phsedrus, 
and these others — if you, who are such invincible 
drinkers, now refuse to drink. I ought to except 
Socrates, for he is capable of drinking everything 
or nothing ; and whatever we shall determine will 
equally suit him. Since, then, no one present has 
any desire to drink much wine, I shall perhaps 
give less offence if I declare the nature of drunken- 
ness. The science of medicine teaches us that 
drunkenness is very pernicious : nor would I 
choose to drink immoderately myself, or counsel 
another to do so, especially if he had been drunk 
the night before." — " Yes," said Phsedrus, the 
Myrinusian, interrupting him, " I have been ac- 
customed to confide in you, especially in your 
directions concerning medicine ; and I would 
now willingly do so, if the rest will do the same." 
All then agreed that they would drink at this pre- 
sent banquet not for drunkenness but for pleasure. 

"Since, then," said Eryximachus, "it is decided 
that no one shall be compelled to drink more than 
he pleases, I think that we may as well send away 
the flute-player to play to herself ; or, if she likes, 
to the women within. Let us devote the present 
occasion to conversation between ourselves, and if 
you wish, I will propose to you what shall be the 
subject of our discussion." All present desired 
and entreated that he would explain. — " The 
exordium of my speech," said Eryximachus, " will 
be in the style of the Menalippe of Euripides, for 
the story which I am about to tell belongs not to 
me, but to Phaedrus. Phsedrus has often indig- 
nantly complained to me, saying — 'Is it not 
strange, Eryximachus, that there are innumerable 



hymns and p;e:ms composed for the other gods, 
but that not one of the many poets who spring 
up in the world has ever composed a verse in 
honour of Love, who is such and so great a god I 
Nor any one of those accomplished sophists, who, 
like the famous Prodicus, have celebrated the 
praise of Hercules and others, have ever celebrated 
that of Love ; but what is more astonishing, I 
have lately met with the book of some philoso- 
pher, in which salt is extolled on account of its 
utility, and many other things of the same nature 
are hi like manner extolled with elaborate praise. . 
That so much serious thought is expended on 
such trifles, and that no man has dared to this 
day to frame a hymn in honour of Love, who 
being so great a deity, is thus neglected, may well 
be sufficient to excite my indignation.' 

" There seemed to me some justice in these 
complaints of Pheedrus ; I propose, therefore, at 
the same time, for the sake of giving pleasure to 
Phsedrus, and that we may on the present occa- 
sion do something well and befitting us, that this 
God should receive from those who are now pre- 
sent the honour which is most due to him. If 
you agree to my proposal, an excellent discussion 
might arise on the subject. Every one ought, 
according to my plan, to praise Love with as 
much eloquence as he can. Let Phsedrus begin 
first, both because he reclines the first h\ order, 
and because he is the father of the discussion." 

" No one will vote against you, Eryximachus," 
said Socrates, " for how can I oppose your propo- 
sal, who am ready to confess that I know nothing 
on any subject but love ? Or how can Agathon, or 
Pausanias, or even Aristophanes, whose life is 
one perpetual ministration to Venus and Bacchus ? 
Or how can any other whom I see here ? Though 
we who sit last are scarcely on an equality with 
you ; for if those who speak before us shall have 
exhausted the subject with their eloquence and 
reasonings, our discourses will be superfluous. 
But in the name of Good Fortune, let Phaedrus 
begin and praise Love." The whole party agreed 
to what Socrates said, and entreated Phaedrus to 
begin. 

What each then said on this subject, Aristode- 
mus did not entirely recollect, nor do I recollect 
all that he related to me ; but only the speeches 
of those who said what was most worthy of re- 
membrance First, then, Phsedrus began thus : 

" Love is a mighty deity, and the object of 
admiration, both to Gods and men, for many and 
for various claims ; but especially on account of 
his origin. For that he is to be honoured as one 
of the most ancient of the gods, this may serve as 
a testimony, that Love has no parents, nor is there 



22 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



any poet in* other person who has ever affirmed 
that there are sueh. llosiod says, that first 
'Chaos was produced; then the broad-bosomed 
Earth, to be a secure foundation for all things ; 
then Love.' lie says, that after Chaos these two 
were produced, the Earth and Love. Parmenides, 
speaking of generation, says : — * But he created 
Love before any of the gods.' Acusileus agrees 
with Hesiod. Love, theref ore, is universally ac- 
knowledged to be among the oldest of things. 
And in addition to this, Love is the author of 
our greatest advantages ; for I cannot imagine a 
greater happiness and advantage to one who is in 
the flower of youth than an amiable lover, or to 
a lover than an amiable object of his love. For 
neither birth, nor wealth, nor honours, can 
awaken in the minds of men the principles which 
should guide those who from their youth aspire 
to an honourable and excellent life, as Love 
awakens them. I speak of the fear of shame, 
which deters them from that which is disgraceful ; 
and the love of glory which incites to honourable 
deeds. For it is not possible that a state or 
private person should accomplish, without these 
incitements, anything beautiful or great. I assert, 
then, that should one who loves be discovered 
in any dishonourable action, or tamely enduring 
insult through cowardice, he would feel more 
anguish and shame if observed by the object of 
his passion, than if he were observed by his father 
or his companions, or any other person. In like 
manner, among warmly attached friends, a man is 
especially grieved to be discovered by his friend 
in any dishonourable act. If then, by any con- 
trivance, a state or army could be composed of 
friends bound by strong attachment, it is beyond 
calculation how excellently they would administer 
their affairs, refraining from any thing base, con- 
tending with each other for the acquirement of 
fame, and exhibiting such valour in battle as that, 
though few in numbers, they might subdue all 
mankind. For should one friend desert the ranks 
or cast away his arms in the presence of the other, 
he would suffer far acuter shame from that one 
person's regard, than from the regard of all other 
men. A thousand times would he prefer to die, 
rather than desert the object of his attachment, 
and not succour him in danger. 

" There is none so worthless whom Love cannot 
impel, as it were, by a divine inspiration, towards 
virtue, even so that he may through this inspir- 
ation become equal to one who might naturally be 
more excellent ; and, in truth, as Homer says : 
The God breathes vigour into certain heroes — so 
Love breathes into those who love, the spirit which 
is produced from himself. Not only men, but 



even women who love, are those alone who wil- 
lingly expose themselves to die for others. Alces- 
tis, the daughter of Pelias, affords to the Greeks 
a remarkable example of this opinion ; she alone 
being willing to die for her husband, and so sur- 
passing his parents in the affection with which 
love hispired her towards him, as to make them 
appear, in the comparison with her, strangers to 
their own child, and related to him merely hi 
name ; and so lovely and admirable did this action 
appear, not only to men, but even to the Gods, 
that, although they conceded the prerogative of 
bringing back the spirit from death to few among 
the many who then performed excellent and 
honourable deeds, yet, delighted with this action, 
they redeemed her soul from the infernal regions : 
so highly do the Gods honour zeal and devotion in 
love. They sent back indeed Orpheus, the son of 
OSagrus, from Hell, with his purpose unfulfilled, 
and, showing him only the spectre of her for 
whom he came, refused to render up herself. For 
Orpheus seemed to them, not as Alcestis, to have 
dared die for the sake of her whom he loved, and 
thus to secure to himself a perpetual intercourse 
with her in the regions to which she had preceded 
him, but like a cowardly musician, to have con- 
trived to descend alive into Hell ; and, indeed, 
they appointed as a punishment for his cowardice, 
that he should be put to death by women. 

"Far otherwise did they regard Achilles, the 
son of Thetis, whom they sent to inhabit the 
islands of the blessed. For Achilles, though 
informed by his mother that his own death would 
ensue upon his killing Hector, but that if he 
refrained from it he might return home and die 
in old age, yet preferred revenging and honouring 
his beloved Patroclus ; not to die for him merely, 
but to disdain and reject that life which he had 
ceased to share. Therefore the Greeks honoured 
Achilles beyond all other men, because he thus 
preferred his friend to all things else. 

***** 

" On this account have the Gods rewarded Achil- 
les more amply than Alcestis ; permitting his spirit 
to inhabit the islands of the blessed. Hence do 
I assert that Love is the most ancient and venera- 
ble of deities, and most powerful to endow mortals 
with the possession of happiness and virtue, both 
whilst they live and after they die." 

Thus Aristodemus reported the discourse of 
Phsedrus ; and after Phaedrus, he said that some 
others spoke, "whose discourses he did not well 
remember. When they had ceased, Pausanias 
began thus : — 

" Simply to praise Love, Phaedrus, seems to 
me too bounded a scope for our discourse. If 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



?;\ 



Love were one, it would be well. But since Love 
is not one, I will endeavour to distinguish which is 
the Love whom it becomes us to praise, and having 
thus discriminated one from the other, will attempt 
to render him who is the subject of our discourse 
the honour due to his divinity. We all know 
that Venus is never without Love ; and if Venus 
were one, Love would be one ; but since there are 
two Venuses, of necessity also must there be two 
Loves. For assuredly are there two Venuses ; 
one, the eldest, the daughter of Uranus, born 
without a mother, whom we call the Uranian ; 
the other younger, the daughter of Jupiter and 
Dione, whom we call the Pandemian ; — of neces- 
sity must there also be two Loves, the Uranian 
and Pandemian companions of these goddesses. 
It is becoming to praise all the Gods, but the 
attributes which fall to the lot of each may be 
distinguished and selected. For any particular 
action whatever, in itself is neither good nor evil ; 
what we are now doing — drinking, singing, talking, 
none of these things are good in themselves, but 
the mode in which they are done stamps them 
with its own nature ; and that which is done well, 
is good, and that which is done ill, is evil. Thus, 
not all love, nor every mode of love is beautiful, 
or worthy of commendation, but that alone which 
excites us to love worthily. The Love, therefore, 
which attends upon Venus Pandemos is, in truth, 
common to the vulgar, and presides over transient 
and fortuitous connexions, and is worshipped by 
the least excellent of mankind. The votaries of 
this deity seek the body rather than the soul, and 
the ignorant rather than the wise, disdaining all 
that <is honourable and lovely, and considering how 
they shall best satisfy their sensual necessities. 
This Love is derived from the younger goddess, 
who partakes in her nature both of male and 
female. But the attendant on the other, the 
Uranian, whose nature is entirely masculine, is the 
Love who inspires us with affection, and exempts 
us from all wantonness and libertinism. Those 
who are inspired by this divinity seek the affections 
of those who are endowed by nature with greater 
excellence and vigour both of body and mind. 
And it is easy to distinguish those who especially 
exist under the influence of this power, by their 
choosing in early youth as the objects of their love 
those in whom the intellectual faculties have begun 
to develop. For those who begin to love in this 
manner, seem to me to be preparing to pass their 
whole life together in a community of good and 
evil, and not ever lightly deceiving those who love 
them, to be faithless to their vows. There ought 
to be a law that none should love the very young ; 
so much serious affection as this deity enkindles, 



should not be doubtfully bestowed ; for the body 
and mind of those so young are yet unformed, and 
it is difficult to foretell what will be their future 
tendencies and power. The good voluntarily im- 
pose this law upon themselves, and those vulgar 
lovers ought to be compelled to the same, observ- 
ance, as we deter them with all the power of the 
laws from the love of free matrons. For these are 
the persons whose shameful actions embolden those 
who observe their importunity and intemperance, to 
assert, that it is dishonourable to serve and gratify 
the objects of our love. But no one who does 
this gracefully and according to law, can justly be 
liable to the imputation of blame. 

***** 

" Not only friendship, but philosophy and the 
practice of the gymnastic exercises, are represented 
as dishonourable by the tyrannical governments 
under which the barbarians live. For I imagine 
it would little conduce to the benefit of the gover- 
nors, that the governed should be disciplined to 
lofty thoughts and to the unity and communion of 
stedfast friendship, of which admirable effects the 
tyrants of our own country have also learned that 
Love is the author. For the love of Harmodius 
and Aristogiton, strengthened into a firm friend- 
ship, dissolved the tyranny. Wherever, therefore, 
it is declared dishonourable in any case to serve and 
benefit friends, that law is a mark of the depravity 
of the legislator, the avarice and tyranny of the 
rulers, and the cowardice of those who are ruled. 
Wherever it is simply declared to be honourable 
without distinction of cases, such a declaration 
denotes dulness and want of subtlety of mind in 
the authors of the regulation. Here the degrees 
of praise or blame to be attributed by law are far 
better regulated ; but it is yet difficult to determine 
the cases to which they should refer. 

" It is evident, however, for one in whom passion 
is enkindled, it is more honourable to love openly 
than secretly ; and most honourable to love the 
most excellent and virtuous, even if they should be 
less beautiful than others. It is honourable for 
the lover to exhort and sustain the object of his 
love in virtuous conduct. It is considered honour- 
able to attain the love of those whom we seek, and 
the contrary shameful ; and to facilitate this attain- 
ment, opinion has given to the lover the permission 
of acquiring favour by the most extraordinary 
devices, which if a person should practise for any 
purpose besides this, he would incur the severest 
reproof of philosophy. For if any one desirous of 
accumulating money, or ambitious of procuring 
power, or seeking any other advantage, should, 
like a lover, seeking to acquire the favour of his 
beloved, employ prayers and enti*eaties m his 



24 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



necessity, and swear mob oaths as lovers swear, 
ami sloop before the threshold, and offer to subject 
himself to such slavery as no slave even would 
endure ; he would be frustrated of the attainment 

of what he sought, both by his enemies and friends ; 
these reviling him for his flattery, those sharply 
admonishing him, and taking to themselves the 
shame of his servility. But there is a certain 
grace in a Lover who does all these things, so that 
he alone may do them without dishonour. It is 
commonly said that the Gods accord pardon to the 
lover alone if he should break his oath, and that 
there is no oath by Venus. Thus, as our law 
declares, both Gods and men have given to lovers 
all possible indulgence. 

***** 

" The affair, however, I imagine, stands thus : 
As I have before said, love cannot be considered 
in itself as either honourable or dishonourable : 
if it is honourably pursued, it is honourable ; if 
dishonourably, dishonourable : it is dishonourable 
basely to serve and gratify a worthless person ; it 
is honourable honourably to serve a person of 
virtue. That Pandemic lover who loves rather 
the body than the soul, is worthless, nor can be 
constant and consistent, since he has placed his 
affections on that which has no stability. For as 
soon as the flower of the form, which was the sole 
object of his desire, has faded, then he departs and 
is seen no more ; bound by no faith nor shame of 
Ills many promises and persuasions. But he who is 
the lover of virtuous manners is constant during 
life, since he has placed himself in harmony and 
desire with that which is consistent with itself. 

" These two classes of persons we ought to 
distinguish with careful examination, so that we 
may serve and converse with the one and avoid 
the other ; determining, by that inquiry, by what 
a man is attracted, and for what the object of his 
love is dear to him. On the same account it is 
considered as dishonourable to be inspired with love 
at once, lest time should be wanting to know and 
approve the character of the obj ect. It is considered 
as dishonourable to be captivated by the allurements 
of wealth and power, or terrified through injuries 
to yield up the affections, or not to despise in the 
comparison with an unconstrained choice all politi- 
cal influence and personal advantage. For no 
circumstance is there in wealth or power so invaria- 
ble and consistent, as that no generous friendship 
can ever spring up from amongst them. We have 
an opinion with respect to lovers which declares 
that it shall not be considered servile or disgraceful, 
though the lover should submit himself to any species 
of slavery for the sake of his beloved. The same 
opinion holds with respect to those who undergo 



any degradation for the sake of virtue. And also it 
is esteemed among us, that if any one chooses to 
serve and obey another for the purpose of becoming 
more wise or more virtuous through the intercourse 
that might thence arise, such willing slavery is not 
the slavery of a dishonest flatterer. Through this 
we should consider in the same light a servitude 
undertaken for the sake of love as one undertaken 
for the acquirement of wisdom or any other excel- 
lence, if indeed the devotion of a lover to his 
beloved is to be considered a beautiful thing. 
For when the lover and the beloved have once 
arrived at the same point, the province of each 
being distinguished ; the one able to assist in the 
cultivation of the mind and in the acquirement 
of every other excellence ; the other yet requiring 
education, and seeking the possession of wisdom ; 
then alone, by the union of these conditions, and in 
no other case, is it honourable for the beloved to 
yield up the affections to the lover. In this ser- 
vitude alone there is no disgrace hi being deceived 
and defeated of the object for which it was under- 
taken ; whereas every other is disgraceful, whether 
we are deceived or no. 

***** 

" On the same principle,if any one seeks the friend- 
ship of another, believing him to be virtuous, for 
the sake of becoming better through such inter- 
course and affection, and is deceived, his friend 
turning out to be worthless, and far from the 
possession of virtue ; yet it is honourable to have 
been so deceived. For such a one seems to have 
submitted to a kind of servitude, because he would 
endure anything for the sake of becoming more 
virtuous and wise ; a disposition of mind eminently 
beautiful. 

" This is that Love who attends on the Uranian 
deity, and is Uranian ; the author of innumerable 
benefits both to the state and to individuals, and 
by the necessity of whose influence those who love 
are disciplined into the zeal of virtue. All other 
loves are the attendants on Venus Pandemos. So 
much, although unpremeditated, is what I have to 
deliver on the subject of love, Phsedrus." 

Pausanias having ceased (for so the learned teach 
me to denote the changes of the discourse), Aristo- 
demus said that it came to the turn of Aristophanes 
to speak ; but it happened that, from repletion or 
some other cause, he had an hiccough which pre- 
vented him ; so he turned to Eryximachus, the 
physician, who was reclining close beside him, and 
said — " Eryximachus, it is but fair that you should 
cure my hiccough, or speak instead of me until it 
is over." — "I will do both," said Eryximachus ; 
" I will speak in your turn, and you, when your 
hiccough has ceased, shall speak in mine. Mean- 



Till: BANQUET OF PLATO. 



25 



while, if you hold your breath some time, it will 
subside. If not, gargle your throat with water ; 
and if it still continue, take something to stimulate 
your nostrils, and sneeze ; do this once or twice, 
and even though it should be very violent it will 
cease." — "Whilst you speak," said Aristophanes, 
"I will follow your directions." — Eryxiinachus 
then began : — 

" Since Pausanias, beginning his discourse excel- 
lently, placed no fit completion and development 
to it, I think it necessary to attempt to fill up 
what he has left unfinished. He has reasoned well 
in defining love as of a double nature. The science 
of medicine, to which I have addicted myself, seems 
to teach me that the love which impels towards 
those who are beautiful, does not subsist only in 
the souls of men, but in the bodies also of those of 
all other living beings which are produced upon 
earth, and, in a word, in all things which are. So 
wonderful and mighty is this divinity, and so widely 
is his influence extended over all divine and human 
things ! For the honour of my profession, I will 
begin by adducing a proof from medicine. The 
nature of the body contains within itself this double 
love. For that which is healthy and that which 
is diseased in a body differ and are unlike : that 
which is unlike, loves and desires that which is 
unlike. Love, therefore, is different in a sane and 
in a diseased body. Pausanias has asserted rightly 
that it is honourable to gratify those things in the 
body which are good and healthy, and in this 
consists the skill of the physician ; whilst those 
which are bad and diseased, ought to be treated 
with no indulgence. The science of medicine, in a 
word, is a knowledge of the love affairs of the body, 
as they bear relation to repletion and evacuation ; 
and he is the most skilful physician who can trace 
those operations of the good and evil love, can 
make the one change places with the other, and 
attract love into those parts from which he is absent, 
or expel him from those which he ought not to 
occupy. He ought to make those things which are 
most inimical, friendly, and excite them to mutual 
love. But those things are most inimical, which are 
most opposite to each other ; cold to heat, bitter- 
ness to sweetness, dryness to moisture. Our pro- 
genitor, iEsculapius, as the poets inform us, (and 
indeed I believe them,) through the skill which he 
possessed to inspire love and concord in these 
contending principles, established the science of 
medicine. 

" The gymnastic arts and agriculture, no less 
than medicine, are exercised under the dominion 
of this God. Music, as any one may perceive, 
who yields a very slight attention to the subject, 
originates from the same source ; which Hera- 



clitus probably meant, though he could not e\j 
his meaning very clearly in words, when he Bays, 
' One though apparently differing, yet so ul 
with itself, as the harmony of a lyre and a bow.' 
It is great absurdity to say that a harmony differs, 
and can exist between things whilst they are dis- 
similar ; but probably he meant that from sounds 
which first differed, like the grave and the acute, 
and which afterwards agreed, harmony was pro- 
duced according to musical art. For no harmony 
can arise from the grave and the acute whilst yet 
they differ. But harmony is symphony : sym- 
phony is, as it were, concord. But it is impossible 
that concord should subsist between things that 
differ, so long as they differ. Between things 
which are discordant and dissimilar there is then 
no harmony. A rhythm is produced from that 
which is quick, and that which is slow, first being 
distinguished and opposed to each other, and then 
made accordant ; so does medicine, no less than 
music, establish a concord between the objects of 
its art, producing love and agreement between 
adverse things. 

"Music is then the knowledge of that which 
relates to love in harmony and system. In the 
very system of harmony and rhythm, it is easy to 
distinguish love. The double love is not distin- 
guishable in music itself ; but it is required to 
apply it to the service of mankind by system and 
harmony, which is called poetry, or the composi- 
tion of melody ; or by the correct use of songs and 
measures already composed, which is called disci- 
pline ; then one can be distinguished from the 
other, by the aid of an extremely skilful artist. 
And the better love ought to be honoured and pre- 
served for the sake of those who are virtuous, and 
that the nature of the vicious may be changed 
through the inspiration of its spirit. This is that 
beautiful Uraman love, the attendant on the Ura- 
nian muse : the Pandemian is the attendant of 
Polyhymnia ; to whose influence we should only 
so far subject ourselves, as to derive pleasure from 
it without indulging to excess ; in the same maimer 
as, according to our art, we are instructed to seek 
the pleasures of the table, only so far as we can 
enjoy them without the consequences of disease. 
In music, therefore, and in medicine, and in all 
other things, human and divine, this double love 
ought to be traced and discriminated ; for it is in 
all things. 

" Even the constitution of the seasons of the 
year is penetrated with these contending princi- 
ples. For so often as heat and cold, dryness and 
moisture, of which I spoke before, are influenced 
by the more benignant love, and are harmoniously 
and temperately intermingled with the seasons. 



26 



THE lUNQUET OF PLATO. 



they bring maturity and health to men, and to all 

the otter animals and plants. Hut when the evil 
and injurious love assumes the dominion of the 
seasons of the year, destruction is spread widely 
abroad. Then pestilence is accustomed to arise, 
and many other blights and diseases fall upon ani- 
mals and plants : and hoar frosts, and hails, and 
mildew on the corn, are produced from that exces- 
sive and disorderly love, with which each season 
of the year is impelled towards the other ; the 
motions of which and the knowledge of the stars, 
is called astronomy. All sacrifices, and all those 
things iu which divination is concerned, (for these 
things are the links by which is maintained an in- 
tercourse and communion between the Gods and 
men,) are nothing else than the science of preser- 
vation and right government of Love. For im- 
piety is accustomed to spring up, so soon as any 
one ceases to serve the more honourable Love, 
and worship him by the sacrifice of good actions ; 
but submits himself to tne influences of the other, 
in relation to his duties towards his parents, and 
the Gods, and the living, and the dead. It is the 
object of divination to distinguish and remedy the 
effects of these opposite loves ; and divination is 
therefore the author of the friendship of Gods and 
men, because it affords the knowledge of what in 
matters of love is lawful or unlawful to men. 

" Thus every species of love possesses collec- 
tively a various and vast, or rather universal power. 
But love which incites to the acquirement of its 
objects according to virtue and wisdom, possesses the 
most exclusive dominion, and prepares for his wor- 
shippers the highest happiness through the mutual 
intercourse of social kindness which it promotes 
among them, and through the benevolence which 
he attracts to them from the Gods, our superiors. 

" Probably in thus praising Love, I have unwil- 
lingly omitted many things ; but it is your business, 
O Aristophanes, to fill up all that I have left in- 
complete ; or, if you have imagined any other 
mode of honouring the divinity ; for I observe 
your hiccough is over." 

" Yes," said Aristophanes, " but not before I 
applied the sneezing. I wonder why the harmo- 
nious construction of our body should require such 
noisy operations as sneezing ; for it ceased the 
moment I sneezed." — " Do you not observe what 
you do, my good Aristophanes ?" said Eryxima- 
chus ; " you are going to speak, and you predispose 
us to laughter, and compel me to watch for the 
first ridiculous idea which you may start in your 
discourse, when you might have spoken in peace." 
— " Let me unsay what I have said, then," replied 
Aristophanes, laughing. " Do not watch me, I en- 
treat you ; though I am not afraid of saying what 



is laughable, (since that would bo all gain, and quite 
in the accustomed spirit of my muse,) but lest I 
should say what is ridiculous." — " Do you think to 
throw your dart, and escape with impunity, Aris- 
tophanes ? Attend, and what you say be careful 
you maintain ; then, perhaps, if it pleases me, I 
may dismiss you without question." 

"Indeed, Eryximachus," proceeded Aristo- 
phanes, " I have designed that my discourse should 
be very different from yours and that of Pausanias. 
It seems to me that mankind are by no means 
penetrated with a conception of the power of Love, 
or they would have built sumptuous temples and 
altars, and have established magnificent rites of 
sacrifice in his honour ; he deserves worship and 
homage more than all the other Gods, and he has 
yet received none. For Love is of all the Gods 
the most friendly to mortals ; and the physician 
of those wounds, whose cure would be the greatest 
happiness which could be conferred upon the 
human race. I will endeavour to unfold to you 
his true power, and you can relate what I declare 
to others. 

" You ought first to know the nature of man, 
and the adventures he has gone through ; for his 
nature was anciently far different from that which 
it is at present. First, then, human beings were 
formerly not divided into two sexes, male and 
female ; there was also a third, common to both 
the others, the name of which remains, though the 
sex itself has disappeared. The androgynous sex, 
both in appearance and in name, was common both 
to male and female ; its name alone remains, which 
labours under a reproach. 

" At the period to which I refer, the form of 
every human being was round, the back and the 
sides being circularly joined, and each had four 
arms and as many legs ; two faces fixed upon a 
round neck, exactly like each other ; one head 
between the two faces ; four ears, and every thing 
else as from such proportions it is easy to conjec- 
ture. Man walked upright as now, in whatever 
direction he pleased ; but when he wished to go 
fast he made use of all his eight limbs, and pro- 
ceeded in a rapid motion by rolling circularly 
round, — like tumblers, who, with their legs in the 
air, tumble round and round. We account for the 
production of three sexes by supposing that, at the 
beginning, the male was produced from the sun, 
the female from the earth ; and that sex which 
participated in both sexes, from the moon, by 
reason of the androgynous nature of the moon. 
They were round, and their mode of proceeding 
was round, from the similarity which must needs 
subsist between them and their parent. 

" They were strong also, and had aspiring 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



27 



thoughts. They it was who levied war against the 
Gods ; and what Homer writes concerning Ephi- 

altus and Otus, that they sought to ascend heaven 
and dethrone the Gods, in reality relates to tins 
primitive people. Jupiter and the other Gods 
debated what was to be done in this emergency. 
For neither could they prevail on themselves to 
destroy them, as they had the giants, with thunder, 
so that the race should be abolished ; for in that 
case they would be deprived of the honours of the 
sacrifices which they were in the custom of receiv- 
ing from them ; nor could they permit a conti- 
nuance of their insolence and impiety. Jupiter, 
with some difficulty having desired silence, at 
length spoke. *I think,' said he, 'I have con- 
trived a method by which we may, by rendering 
the human race more feeble, quell the insolence 
which they exercise, without proceeding to their 
utter destruction. I will cut each of them in half ; 
and so they will at once be weaker and more useful 
on account of their numbers. They shall walk 
upright on two legs. If they show any more inso- 
lence, and will not keep quiet, I will cut them up in 
half again, so they shall go about hopping on one leg.' 

"So saying, he cut human beings in half, as 
people cut eggs before they salt them, or as I have 
seen eggs cut with hairs. He ordered Apollo to 
take each one as he cut him, and turn his face and 
lialf his neck towards the operation, so that by 
contemplating it he might become more cautious 
and humble ; and then, to cure him, Apollo turned 
the face round, and drawing the skin upon what 
we now call the belly, like a contracted pouch, and 
leaving one opening, that which is called the navel, 
tied it in the middle. He then smoothed many 
other wrinkles, and moulded the breast with much 
such an instrument as the leather-cutters use to 
smooth the skins upon the block. He left only a 
few wrinkles in the belly, near the navel, to serve 
as a record of its former adventure. Immediately 
after this division, as each desired to possess the 
other half of himself, these divided people threw 
their arms around and embraced each other, seek- 
ing to grow together ; and from this resolution to 
do nothing without the other half, they died of 
hunger and weakness : when one half died and the 
other was left alive, that which was thus left sought 
the other and folded it to its bosom ; whether that 
half were an entire woman (for we now call it a 
woman) or a man ; and thus they perished. But 
Jupiter, pitying them, thought of another contri- 
vance. * * * In this maimer is generation 
now produced, by the union of male and female ; 
so that from the embrace of a man and woman the 
race is propagated. 

" From this period, mutual love has naturally 



existed between human beings ; that reconciler 
and bond of union of their original nature, which 
seeks to make two, one, and to heal the divided 
nature of man. Every one of us is thus the half 
of what may be properly termed a man, and like a 
pselta cut in two, is the imperfect portion of an 
entire whole, perpetually necessitated to seek the 
half belonging to him. 

***** 

" Such as I have described is ever an affectionate 
lover and a faithful friend, delighting in that which 
is in conformity with his own nature. Whenever, 
therefore, any such as I have described are impetu- 
ously struck, through the sentiment of their former 
union, with love and desire and the want of com- 
munity, they are unwilling to be divided even for 
a moment. These are they who devote their whole 
lives to each other, with a vain and inexpressible 
longing to obtain from each other something they 
know not what ; for it is not merely the sensual 
delights of their intercourse for the sake of which 
they dedicate themselves to each other with such 
serious affection ; but the soul of each manifestly 
thirsts for, from the other, something which there 
are no words to describe, and divines that which 
it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its 
obscure desire. If Vulcan should say to persons 
thus affected, ' My good people, what is it that you 
want with one another ? ' And if, while they were 
hesitating what to answer, he should proceed to 
ask, 'Do you not desire the closest union and 
singleness to exist between you, so that you may 
never be divided night or day ? If so, I will melt 
you together, and make you grow into one, so that 
both hi life and death ye may be undivided. Con- 
sider, is this what you desire ? Will it content 
you if you become that which I propose V We 
all know that no one would refuse such an offer, 
but would at once feel that this was what he had 
ever sought ; and intimately to mix and melt and 
to be melted together with his beloved, so that one 
should be made out of two. 

" The cause of this desire is, that according to 
our original nature, we were once entire. The 
desire and the pursuit of integrity and union is that 
which we all love. First, as I said, we were entire, 
but now we have been dwindled through our own 
weakness, as the Arcadians by the Lacedemonians. 
There is reason to fear, if we are guilty of any 
additional impiety towards the Gods, that we may 
be cut in two again, and may go about like those 
figures painted on the columns, divided through 
the middle of our nostrils, as thin as lispse. On 
which account every man ought to be exhorted 
to pay due reverence to the Gods, that we may 
escape so severe a punishment, and obtain those 






THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



things which Love, our general and commander, 
incites us to desire ; against whom Let none rebel 
by exciting the hatred of the Gods. For if we 
continne on good tonus with thorn, we may discover 
and possess those lost and concealed objects of our 
tore : ■ good-fortune which now befalls to few. 
***** 

" 1 assert, then, that the happiness of all, both 
men and women, consists singly in the fulfilment 
of their love, and in that possession of its objects 
by which we are in some degree restored to our 
ancient nature. If this be the completion of feli- 
city, that must necessarily approach nearest to it, 
in which we obtain the possession and society of 
those whose natures most Intimately accord with 
onr own. And if we would celebrate any God as 
the author of this benefit, we should justly cele- 
brate Love with hymns of joy ; who, in our present 
condition, brings good assistance in our necessity, 
and affords great hopes, if we persevere in piety 
towards the Gods, that he wall restore us to our 
original state, and confer on us the complete hap- 
piness alone suited to our nature. 

" Such, Eryximachus, is my discourse on the 
subject of Love ; different indeed from yours, which 
I nevertheless entreat you not to turn into ridicule, 
that we may not interrupt what each has separately 
to deliver on the subject." 

" I will refrain at present," said Eryximachus, 
" for your discourse delighted me. And if I did 
not know that Socrates and Agathon were pro- 
foundly versed in the science of love affairs, I should 
fear that they had nothing new to say, after so 
many and such various imaginations. As it is, I 
confide in the fertility of their geniuses." — " Your 
part of the contest, at least, was strenuously fought, 
Eryximachus," said Socrates, "but if you had 
been in the situation in which I am, or rather 
shall be, after the discourse of Agathon, like me, 
you would then have reason to fear, and be reduced 
to your wits' end." — « Socrates," said Agathon, 
" wishes to confuse me with the enchantments of 
his wit, sufficiently confused already with the ex- 
pectation I see in the assembly in favour of my 
discourse." — " I must have lost my memory, Aga- 
thon," replied Socrates, " if I imagined that you 
could be disturbed by a few private persons, after 
having witnessed your firmness and courage in 
ascending the rostrum with the actors, and in 
calmly reciting your compositions in the presence 
of so great an assembly as that which decreed you 
the prize of tragedy." — « What then, Socrates," 
retorted Agathon, "do you think me so full of 
the theatre as to be ignorant that the judgment of 
a few wise is more awful than that of a multi- 
tude of others, to one who rightly balances the 



value of their suffrages!" — "I should judge ill 

indeed, Agathon,'' answered Socrates, " in thinking 
you capable of any rude and unrefined conception, 
for 1 well know that if you meet with any whom 
you consider wise, you esteem such alone of more 
value than all others. But we are far from being 
entitled to this distinction, for we were also of that 
assembly, and to be numbered among the rest. 
But should you meet with any who are really wise, 
you would be careful to say nothing in their pre- 
sence which you thought they would not approve — 
is it not so ? " — " Certainly," replied Agathon.— 
" You would not then exercise the same caution 
in the presence of the multitude in which they 
were included ? " — " My dear Agathon," said Phae- 
drus, interrupting him, "if you answer all the 
questions of Socrates, they will never have an end ; 
he will urge them without conscience so long as he 
can get any person, especially one who is so beau- 
tiful, to dispute with him. I own it delights me 
to hear Socrates discuss ; but at present, I must 
see that Love is not defrauded of the praise, 
which it is my province to exact from each of you. 
Pay the God his due, and then reason between 
yourselves if you will." 

"Your admonition is just, Phsedrus," replied 
Agathon, "nor need any reasoning I hold with 
Socrates impede me : we shall find many future op- 
portunities for discussion. I will begin my discourse 
then ; first having defined what ought to be the 
subject of it. All who have already spoken seem to 
me not so much to have praised Love, as to have feli- 
citated mankind on the many advantages of which 
that deity is the cause ; what he is, the author of 
these great benefits, none have yet declared. There 
is one mode alone of celebration which would com- 
prehend the whole topic, namely, first to declare 
what are those benefits, and then what he is who is 
the author of those benefits, which are the subject of 
our discourse. Love ought first to be praised, and 
then his gifts declared. I assert, then, that although 
all the Gods are immortally happy, Love, if I dare 
trust my voice to express so awful a truth, is the 
happiest, and most excellent, and the most beau- 
tiful. That he is the most beautiful is evident ; 
first, Phaedrus, from this circumstance, that he 
is the youngest of the Gods ; and, secondly, from 
his fleetness, and from his repugnance to all that 
is old ; for he escapes with the swiftness of wings 
from old age ; a thing in itself sufficiently swift, 
since it overtakes us sooner than there is need ; 
and which Love, who delights in the intercourse 
of the young, hates, and in no manner can be 
induced to enter into community with. The 
ancient proverb, which says that like is attracted 
by like, applies to the attributes of Love. I con- 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



2.9 



cede many tilings to you, O Pheedrus, but this I 
do not concede, that Love is more ancient than 
Saturn and Jupiter. I assert that he is not only 
the youngest of the Gods, but invested with ever- 
lasting youth. Those ancient deeds among the 
Gods recorded by Hesiod and Parmenides, if their 
relations are to be considered as time, were pro- 
duced not by Love, but by Necessity. For if Love 
had been then in Heaven, those violent and san- 
guinary crimes never would have taken place ; 
but there would ever have subsisted that affection 
and peace, in which the Gods now live, under the 
influence of Love. 

" He is young, therefore, and being young is 
tender and soft. There were need of some poet 
like Homer to celebrate the delicacy and tender- 
ness of Love. For Homer says, that the goddess 
Calamity is delicate, and that her feet are tender. 
1 Her feet are soft,' he says, e for she treads not 
upon the ground, but makes her path upon the 
heads of men.' He gives as an evidence of her 
tenderness, that she walks not upon that winch is 
hard, but that which is soft. The same evidence 
is sufficient to make manifest the tenderness of 
Love. For Love walks not upon the earth, nor 
over the heads of men, which are not indeed very 
soft ; but he dwells within, and treads on the softest 
of existing things, having established his habitation 
within the souls and inmost nature of Gods and 
men ; not indeed in all souls — for wherever he 
chances to find a hard and rugged disposition, 
there he will not inhabit, but only where it is most 
soft and tender. Of needs must he be the most 
delicate of all things, who touches lightly with his 
feet, only the softest parts of those things which 
are the softest of all. 

u He is then the youngest and the most delicate 
of all divinities ; and in addition to this, he is, as 
it were, the most moist and liquid. For if he were 
otherwise, he could not, as he does, fold himself 
around everything, and secretly flow out and into 
every soul. His loveliness, that which Love pos- 
sesses far beyond all other things, is a manifestation 
of the liquid and flowing symmetry of his form ; 
for between deformity and Love there is eternal 
contrast and repugnance. His life is spent among 
flowers, and this accounts for the immortal fairness 
of his skin ; for the winged Love rests not in his 
flight on any form, or within any soul the flower 
of whose loveliness is faded, but there remains 
most willingly where is the odour and radiance of 
blossoms, yet unwithered. Concerning the beauty 
of the God, let this be sufficient, though many 
things must remain unsaid. Let us next consider 
the virtue and power of Love. 

" What is most admirable in Love is, that lie 



neither inflicts nor endures injury m his relations 
either with Gods or men. Nor if he suffers any 
thing does he suffer it through violence, nor doing 
anything does he act it with violence, for Love is 
never even touched with violence. Every one 
willingly administers everything to Love ; and that 
which every one voluntarily concedes to another, 
the laws, which arc the kings of the republic, decree 
that it is just for him to possess. In addition to 
justice, Love participates in the highest temper- 
ance ; for if temperance is defined to be the being 
superior to and holding under dominion pleasures 
and desires ; then Love, than whom no pleasure is 
more powerful, and who is thus more powerful than 
all persuasions and delights, must be excellently 
temperate. In power and valour Mars cannot 
contend with Love : the love of Venus possesses 
Mars ; the possessor is always superior to the 
possessed, and he who subdues the most powerful 
must of necessity be the most powerful of alL 

* The justice and temperance and valour of the 
God have been thus declared ; — there remains to 
exhibit his wisdom. And first, that, like Eryxi- 
machus, I may honour my own profession, the God 
is a wise poet ; so wise that he can even make a 
poet one who was not before : for every one, even 
if before he were ever so undisciplined, becomes a 
poet as soon as he is touched by Love ; a suffi- 
cient proof that Love is a great poet, and well 
skilled in that science according to the discipline of 
music. For what any one possesses not, or knows 
not, that can he neither give nor teach another. 
And who will deny that the divine poetry, by which 
all living things are produced upon the earth, is 
not harmonized by the wisdom of Love ? Is it not 
evident that Love was the author of all the arts of 
life with which we are acquainted, and that he 
whose teacher has been Love, becomes eminent and 
illustrious, whilst he who knows not Love, remains 
for ever unregarded and obscure ? Apollo invented 
medicine, and divination, and archery, under the 
guidance of desire and Love ; so that Apollo was 
the disciple of Love. Through him the Muses 
discovered the arts of literature, and Vulcan that 
of moulding brass, and Minerva the loom, and 
Jupiter the mystery of the dominion which he now 
exercises over Gods and men. So were the Gods 
taught and disciplined by the love of that which is 
beautiful ; for there is no love towards deformity. 

" At the origin of things, as I have before said, 
many fearful deeds are reported to have been done 
among the Gods, en account of the dominion of 
Necessity. ' But so soon as this deity sprang forth 
from the desire which forever tends in the universe 
towards that which is lovely, then all blessings 
descended upon all living things, human and divine. 



THE HANQUET OF PLATO. 



Low mems to me, Phsedrus, a divinity (she most. 

beautiful ami tlio best of all, ami tho author to all 
others of the excellences wiih whioh his own 
nature is endowed. Nor can I restrain the pm tie 
enthusiasm whieh takes possession of my diseourse, 
and hids me doelaro that Love is the divinity who 
ereates peace among men, and calm upon the sea, 
the windless silenee of storms, repose and sleep in 
sadness. Love divests us of all alienation from 
each other, and fills our vacant hearts with over- 
flowing sympathy ; he gathers us together in such 
social meetings as we now delight to celebrate, our 
guardian and our guide in dances, and sacrifices, 
and feasts. Yes, Love who showers benignity 
upon the world, and before whose presence all 
harsh passions flee and perish ; the author of all 
soft affections ; the destroyer of all ungentle 
thoughts ; merciful, mild ; the object of the ad- 
miration of the wise, and the delight of gods ; 
possessed by the fortunate, and desired by the 
unhappy, therefore unhappy because they possess 
him not ; the father of grace, and delicacy, and 
gentleness, and delight, and persuasion, and desire ; 
the cherisher of all that is good, the abolisher of all 
evil ; our most excellent pilot, defence, saviour and 
guardian in labour and in fear, in desire and in 
reason ; the ornament and governor of all things 
human and divine ; the best, the loveliest ; in whose 
footsteps everyone ought to follow, celebrating him 
excellently in song, and bearing each his part in 
that divinest harmony which Love sings to all 
things which live and are, soothing the troubled 
minds of Gods and men. This, Phsedrus, is what 
I have to offer in praise of the divinity ; partly 
composed, indeed, of thoughtless and playful fan- 
cies, and partly of such serious ones, as I could well 
command." 

No sooner had Agathon ceased, than a loud 
murmur of applause arose from all present ; so 
becomingly had the fair youth spoken, both in 
praise of the God, and in extenuation of himself. 
Then Socrates, addressing Eryximachus, said, 
" Was not my fear reasonable, son of Acumenus ? 
Did I not divine what has, in fact, happened, — ■ 
that Agathon's discourse would be so wonderfully 
beautiful, as to pre-occupy all interest in what I 
should say \ " — " You, indeed, divined well so far, 
O Socrates," said Eryximachus, "that Agathon 
would speak eloquently, but not that, therefore, 
you would be reduced to any difficulty." — "How,my 
good friend, can I or any one else be otherwise than 
reduced to difficulty, who speak after a discourse 
so various and so eloquent, and which otherwise 
had been sufficiently wonderful, if, at the conclu- 
sion, the splendour of the sentences, and the choice 
selection of the expressions, had not struck all 



the hearers with astonishment ; so that I, who well 
know that I can never say anything nearly so 
beautiful as this, would, if there had been any 
escape, have run away for shame. The story of 
Gorgias came into my mind, and I was afraid lest 
in reality I should suffer what Homer describes ; 
and lest Agathon, scanning my discourse with the 
head of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to 
stone for speechlessness. I immediately perceived 
how ridiculously I had engaged myself with you 
to assume a part in rendering praise to Love, and 
had boasted that I was well skilled in amatory mat- 
ters, being so ignorant of the manner in which it is 
becoming to render him honour, as I now perceive 
myself to be. I, in my simplicity, imagined that 
the ti'uth ought to be spoken concerning each of 
the topics of our praise, and that it would be suffi- 
cient, choosing those which are the most honourable 
to the God, to place them in as kuninous an 
arrangement as we could. I had, therefore, great 
hopes that I should speak satisfactorily, being well 
aware that I was acquainted with the true found- 
ations of the praise which we have engaged to 
render. But since, as it appears, our purpose 
has been, not to render Love his due honour, but 
to accumulate the most beautiful and the greatest 
attributes of his divinity, whether they in truth 
belong to it or not, and that the proposed question 
is not how Love ought to be praised, but how we 
should praise him most eloquently, my attempt 
must of necessity fail. It is on this account, I 
imagine, that in your discourses you have attri- 
buted everything to Love, and have described him 
to be the author of such and so great effects as, to 
those who are ignorant of his true nature, may 
exhibit him as the most beautiful and the best of 
all things. Not, indeed, to those who know the 
truth. Such praise has a splendid and imposing 
effect, but as I am unacquainted with the art of 
rendering it, my mind, which could not foresee what 
would be required of me, absolves me from that 
which my tongue promised. Farewell then, for 
such praise I can never render. 

" But if you desire, I will speak what I feel to 
be true ; and that I may not expose myself to 
ridicule, I entreat you to consider that I speak 
without entering into competition with those who 
have preceded me. Consider, then, Phsedrus, 
whether you will exact from me such a discourse, 
containing the mere truth with respect to Love, 
and composed of such unpremeditated expressions 
as may chance to offer themselves to my mind." — 
Phsedrus and the rest bade him speak in the 
manner which he judged most befitting. — " Permit 
me, then, Phaedrus, to ask Agathon a few 
questions, so that, confirmed by his agreement 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



81 



with me, I may proceed." — " Willingly," replied 
Phsedrus, "ask." — Then Socrates thus began : — 

" I applaud, dear Agathon, the beginning of 
your discourse, where you say, we ought first to 
define and declare what Love is, and then his 
works. This rule I particularly approve. But, 
come, since you have given us a discourse of such 
beauty and majesty concerning Love, you are able, 
I doubt not, to explain this question, whether 
Love is the love of something or nothing ? I do 
not ask you of what parents Love is ; for the 
inquiry, of whether Love is the love of any father 
or mother, would be sufficiently ridiculous. But 
if T were asking you to describe that which a father 
is, I should ask, not whether a father was the love 
of any one, but whether a father was the father of 
any one or not ; you would undoubtedly reply, that 
a father was the father of a son or daughter ; would 
you not ? " — " Assuredly." — " You would define a 
mother in the same manner V — " Without doubt." 
" Yet bear with me, and answer a few more ques- 
tions, for I would learn from you that which I wish 
to know. If I should inquire, in addition, is not 
a brother, through the very nature of his relation, 
the brother of some one ?"— " Certainly." — " Of a 
brother or sister is he not ?" — " Without question." 
— " Try to explain to me then the nature of Love ; 
Love is the love of something or nothing ? " — " Of 
something, certainly." 

" Observe and remember tins concession. Tell 
me yet farther, whether Love desires that of which 
it is the Love or not ? " — "It desires it, assuredly." 
— " Whether possessing that which it desires and 
loves, or not possessing it, does it desire and love ? " 
— " Not possessing it, I should imagine." — " Observe 
now, whether it does not appear, that, of necessity, 
desire desires that winch it wants and does not 
possess, and no longer desires that which it no 
longer wants : this appears to me, Agathon, of 
necessity to be ; how does it appear to you ? " — 
" It appears so to me also." — " Would any one who 
was already illustrious, desire to be illustrious ; 
would any one already strong, desire to be strong ? 
From what has already been conceded, it follows 
that he would not. If any one already strong, 
should desire to be strong ; or any one already 
swift, should desire to be swift ; or any one already 
healthy, should desire to be healthy, it must be 
concluded that they still desired the advantages of 
which they already seemed possessed. To destroy 
the foundation of this error, observe, Agathon, that 
each of these persons must possess the several 
advantages in question, at the moment present to 
our thoughts, whether he will or no. And, now, is 
it possible that those advantages should be at that 
time the objects of his desire ? For, if any one 



should Bay, being in health, { 1 desire to be in 
health ;' being rich, 'I desire to be rich, and thus 
still desire those things which I already poOBi 
we might say to him, ' You, my friend, possess 
health, and strength, and riches ; you do not 
desire to possess now, but to continue to possess 
them in future ; for, whether you will or no, 
they now belong to you. Consider then, whether, 
when you say that you desire things present to 
you, and in your own possession, you say any- 
thing else than that you desire the advantages 
to be for the future also in your possession.' What 
else could he reply \ " — " Nothing, indeed." — " Is 
not Love, then, the love of that which is not within 
its reach, and which cannot hold in security, for 
the future, those things of which it obtains a pre- 
sent and transitory possession % " — " Evidently." — 
" Love, therefore, and every thing else that desires 
anything, desires that which is absent and beyond 
his reach, that which it has not, that which is not 
itself, that which it wants ; such are the things of 
which there are desire and love." — u Assuredly." 

"Come," said Socrates, "let us review your 
concessions. Is Love anything else than the love 
first of something ; and, secondly, of those things 
of which it has need?" — " Nothing." — "Now, re- 
member of those tilings you said in your discourse, 
that Love was the love — if you wish I will remind 
you. I think you said something of this kind, that 
all the affairs of the gods were admirably disposed 
through the love of the things which are beautiful ; 
for there was no love of things deformed ; did you 
not say so ? "— " I confess that I did."—" You said 
what was most likely to be true, my friend ; and if 
the matter be so, the love of beauty must be one 
thing, and the love of deformity another." — " Cer- 
tainly." — "It is conceded, then, that Love loves 
that which he wants but possesses not ? " — " Yes, 
certainly." — " But Love wants and does not pos- 
sess beauty % " — " Indeed it must necessarily follow." 
— " What, then ! call you that beautiful which has 
need of beauty and possesses not 3 " — " Assuredly 
no." — "Do you still assert, then, that Love is 
beautiful, if all that we have said be true ? " — 
" Indeed, Socrates," said Agathon, " I am in danger 
of being convicted of ignorance, with respect to all 
that I then spoke." — " You spoke most eloquently, 
my dear Agathon ; but bear with my questions yet 
a moment. You admit that things which are good 
are also beautiful ?"—« No doubt."— "If Love, 
then, be in want of beautiful things, and things 
which are good are beautiful, he must be in want 
of things which are good % " — " I cannot refute 
your arguments, Socrates." — " You cannot refute 
truth, my dear Agathon: to refute Socrates is 
nothing difficult. 



39 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



" Bat I will dismiss these questionings. At 
present let me endeavour, to the best of my power, 
to repeat to you, on the basis of the points which 
have been agreed upon between me and Agathon, a 
discourse oonoerning Love, which I formerly hoard 
from the prophetess Diotima, who was profoundly 
skilled in this and many other doctrines, and who, 
ten years before the pestilence, procured to the 
Athenians, through their sacrifices, a delay of the 
disease ; for it was she who taught me the science 
of things relating to Love. 

'• As you well remarked, Agathon, we ought to 
declare who and what is Love, and then his works. 
It is easiest to relate them in the same order, as 
the foreign prophetess observed when, questioning 
me, she related them. For I said to her much the 
same things that Agathon has just said to me — 
that Love was a great deity, and that he was 
beautiful ; and she refuted me with the same reasons 
as I have employed to refute Agathon, compelling 
me to infer that he was neither beautiful nor good, 
as I said. — 'What then,' I objected, f O Diotima, 
is Love ugly and evil ? ' — « Good words, I entreat 
you,' said Diotima ; * do you think that every thing 
which is not beautiful, must of necessity be ugly ? ' 
— ' Certainly.' — ( And every thing that is not wise, 
ignorant ? Do you not perceive that there is some- 
thing between ignorance and wisdom ? ' — ' What is 
that ? ' — ' To have a right opinion or conjecture. 
Observe, that this kind of opinion, for which no 
reason can be rendered, cannot be called knowledge ; 
for how can that be called knowledge, which is 
without evidence or reason ? Nor ignorance, on 
the other hand ; for how can that be called igno- 
rance which arrives at the persuasion of that which 
it really is ? A right opinion is something between 
understanding and ignorance.' — I confessed that 
what she alleged was true. — 'Do not then say,' 
she continued, ' that what is not beautiful is of 
necessity deformed, nor what is not good is of 
necessity evil ; nor, since you have confessed that 
Love is neither beautiful nor good, infer, therefore, 
that he is deformed or evil, but rather something 
intermediate.' 

" * But,' I said, ' love is confessed by all to be a 
great God.' — ' Do you mean, when you say all, all 
those who know, or those who know not, what 
they say ? ' — * All collectively.' — ' And how can 
that be, Socrates ? ' said she laughing ; ' how can 
he be acknowledged to be a great God, by those 
who assert that he is not even a God at all ? ' — 
' And who are they ? ' I said. — f You for one, and 
I for another.' — ' How can you say that, Diotima?' 
— ' Easily,' she replied, ' and with truth ; for tell 
me, do you not own that all the Gods are beautiful 
and happy ? or will you presume to maintain that 



any God is otherwise ?' — ' By Jupiter, not I ! ' — 
'Do you not call those alone happy who possess all 
things that arc beautiful and good ? ' — < Certainly.' 
— ' You have confessed that Love, through his 
desire for things beautiful and good, possesses not 
those materials of happiness.' — ' Indeed such was 
my concession.' — ' But how can we conceive a God 
to be without the possession of what is beautiful 
and good?' — 'In no maimer I confess.' — 'Observe, 
then, that you do not consider Love to be a God.' — 
' What, then,' I said, ' is Love a mortal ? ' — ' By no 
means.' — ' But what, then ? ' — ' Like those things 
which I have before instanced, he is neither mortal 
nor immortal, but something intermediate.' — ' What 
is that, Diotima ? ' — ' A great daemon, Socrates ; 
and every thing daemoniacal holds an intermediate 
place between what is divine and what is mortal.' 

" ' What is his power and nature ? ' I inquired.— 
'He interprets and makes a communication be- 
tween divine and human things, conveying the 
prayers and sacrifices of men to the Gods, and 
communicating the commands and directions con- 
cerning the mode of worship most pleasing to 
them, from Gods to men. He fills up that inter- 
mediate space between these two classes of beings, 
so as to bind together, by his own power, the whole 
universe of things. Through him subsist all divi- 
nation, and the science of sacred things as it re- 
lates to sacrifices, and expiations, and disenchant- 
nents, and prophecy, and magic. The divine 
nature cannot immediately communicate with what 
is human, but all that intercourse and converse 
which is conceded by the Gods to men, both whilst 
they sleep and when they wake, subsists through 
the intervention of Love ; and he who is wise in 
j the science of this intercourse is supremely happy, 
! and participates in the daemoniacal nature ; whilst 
i he who is wise in any other science or art, remains 
a mere ordinary slave. These daemons are, indeed, 
many and various, and one of them is Love. 

'"Who are the parents of Love ?' I inquired. — 
' The history of what you ask,' replied Diotima, 
' is somewhat long ; nevertheless I will explain it to 
you. On the birth of Venus the Gods celebrated a 
great feast, and among them came Plenty, the son 
of Metis. After supper, Poverty, observing the 
profusion, came to beg, and stood beside the door. 
Plenty being drunk with nectar, for wine was not 
yet invented, went out into Jupiter's garden, and 
fell Into a deep sleep. Poverty wishing to have a 
child by Plenty, on account of her low estate, lay 
down by him, and from his embraces conceived 
Love. Love is, therefore, the follower and servant 
of Venus, because he was conceived at her birth, 
and because by nature he is a lover of all that is 
beautiful, and Venus was beautiful. And since 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



33 



Love is the child of Poverty ami Plenty, his nature 
aiid fortune participate in that of his parents. He 
is for ever poor, and so far from being delicate and 
beautiful, as mankind imagine, he is squalid and 
withered ; he flies low along the ground, and is 
homeless and unsandalled ; he sleeps without cover- 
ing before the doors, and in the unsheltered streets ; 
possessing thus far his mother's nature, that he is 
ever the companion of Want. But, inasmuch as he 
participates in that of his father, he is for ever 
scheming to obtain things which are good and 
beautiful ; he is fearless, vehement, and strong ; a 
dreadful hunter, for ever weaving some new con- 
trivance ; exceedingly cautious and prudent, and 
full of resources ; he is also, during his whole 
existence, a philosopher, a powerful enchanter, a 
wizard, and a subtle sophist. And, as his nature 
is neither mortal nor immortal, on the same day 
when he is fortunate and successful, he will at one 
time flourish, and then die away, and then, accord- 
ing to his father's nature, again revive. All that 
he acquires perpetually flows away from him, so 
that Love is never either rich or poor, and holding 
for ever an intermediate state between ignorance 
and wisdom. The case stands thus : — no God phi- 
losophizes or desires to become wise, for he is wise ; 
nor, if there exist any other being who is wise, 
does he philosophize. Nor do the ignorant philo- 
sophize, for they desire not to become wise ; for 
this is the evil of ignorance, that he who has 
neither intelligence, nor virtue, nor delicacy of 
sentiment, imagines that he possesses all those 
things sufficiently. He seeks not, therefore, that 
possession, of whose want he is not aware.' — 
* Who, then, Diotima,' I enquired, e are philo- 
sophers, if they are neither the ignorant nor the 
wise \ ' — e It is evident, even to a child, that they 
are those intermediate persons, among whom is 
Love. For Wisdom is one of the most beautiful 
of all things ; Love is that which thirsts for the 
beautiful, so that Love is of necessity a philosopher, 
philosophy being an intermediate state between 
ignorance and wisdom. His parentage accounts for 
his condition, being the child of a wise and well- pro- 
vided father, and of a mother both ignorant and poor. 
" * Such is the dsemoniacal nature, my dear 
Socrates ; nor do I wonder at your error concern- 
ing Love, for you thought, as I conjecture from 
what you say, that Love was not the lover but the 
beloved, and thence, well concluded that he must 
be supremely beautiful ; for that which is the 
object of Love must indeed be fair, and delicate, 
and perfect, and most happy ; but Love inherits, 
as I have declared, a totally opposite nature.' — 
1 Your words have persuasion in them, stranger,' 
I said ; 'be it as you say. But this Love, what 



advantages does he afford to men ?' — <I will pro- 
ceed to explain it to you, Socrates. Love being 
such and so produced as I have described, is, 
indeed, as you say, the love of things which are 
beautiful. But if any one should ask us, saying ; 

Socrates and Diotima, why is Love the love of 
beautiful things ? Or, in plainer words, what does 
the lover of that which is beautiful, love in the 
object of his love, and seek from it V — * He seeks,' 

1 said, interrupting her, ' the property and posses- 
sion of it.' — * But that,' she replied, ' might still 
be met with another question, What has he, who 
possesses that which is beautiful ? '— ** Indeed, I 
cannot immediately reply.' — ' But if, changing the 
beautiful for good, any one should enquire, — I ask, 
Socrates, what is that which he who loves that 
which is good, loves in the object of his love V — 
' To be in his possession,' I replied. — ' And what 
has he, who has the possession of good V — * This 
question is of easier solution : he is happy.' — * Those 
who are happy, then, are happy through the pos- 
session ; and it is useless to enquire what he desires, 
who desires to be happy ; the question seems to 
have a complete reply. But do you think that this 
wish and this love are common to all men, and that 
all desire, that that which is good should be for ever 
present to them V — * Certainly, common to all.' — 
' Why do we not say then, Socrates, that every 
one loves \ if, indeed, all love perpetually the same 
thing ? But we say that some love, and some do 
not.' — i Indeed I wonder why it is so.' — f W T onder 
not,' said Diotima, 'for we select a particular 
species of love, and apply to it distinctively the 
appellation of that which is universal.' 

" ' Give me an example of such a select applica- 
tion.' — ' Poetry ; which is a general name signifying 
every cause whereby anything proceeds from that 
which is not, into that which is ; so that the exercise 
of every inventive art is poetry, and all such artists 
poets. Yet they are not called poets, but distin- 
guished by other names ; and one portion or species 
of poetry, that which has relation to music and 
rhythm, is divided from all others, and known by the 
name belonging to all. For this is alone properly 
called poetry, and those who exercise the art of 
this species of poetry, poets. So, with respect to 
Love. Love is indeed universally all that earnest 
desire for the possession of happiness and that 
which is good ; the greatest and the subtlest love, 
and which inhabits the heart of every living being ; 
but those who seek this object through the acquire- 
ment of wealth, or the exercise of the gymnastic 
arts, or philosophy, are not said to love, nor are 
called lovers ; one species alone is called love, and 
those alone are said to be lovers, and to love, who 
seek the attainment of the universal desire through 



34 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



one species of love, which is peculiarly distinguished 
by tlio name belonging to the whole, ft is assorted 

by some, that they love, who are seeking the lost 
half of their divided being. But I assert., that 
Love is neither the love of the half nor of the whole, 
uiless, my friend, it meets with that which is 
good ; since men willingly cut off their own hands 
and feet, if they think that they are the cause of 
evil to them. Nor do they cherish and embrace that 
which may belong to themselves, merely because it 
is their own ; unless, indeed, any one should choose 
to say, that that which is good is attached to his 
own nature and is his own, whilst that which is 
evil is foreign and accidental ; but love nothing 
but that which is good. Does it not appear so to 
you ?' — * Assuredly.' — f Can we then simply affirm 
that men love that which is good V — ' Without 
doubt.' — ' What, then, must we not add, that, in 
addition to loving that which is good, they love 
that it should be present to themselves V — ' Indeed 
that must be added.' — ' And not merely that it 
should be present, but that it should ever be pre- 
sent V — ' This also must be added.' 

" ' Love, then, is collectively the desire in men 
that good should be for ever present to them.' — 
' Most true.' — ' Since this is the general definition 
of Love, can you explain in what mode of attaining 
its object, and in what species of actions, does Love 
peculiarly consist V — ' If I knew what you ask, O 
Diotima, I should not have so much wondered at 
your wisdom, nor have sought you out for the pur- 
pose of deriving improvement from your instruc- 
tions.' — ' I will tell you,' she replied : ' Love is the 
desire of generation in the beautiful, both with 
relation to the body and the soul.' — * I must be a 
diviner to comprehend what you say, for, being such 
as I am, I confess that I do not understand it.' — 
' But I will explain it more clearly. The bodies and 
the souls of all human beings are alike pregnant 
with their future progeny, and when we arrive at 
a certain age, our nature impels us to bring forth 
and propagate. This nature is unable to produce 
in that which is deformed, but it can produce in 
that which is beautiful. The intercourse of the 
male and female in generation, a divine work, 
through pregnancy and production, is, as it were, 
something immortal in mortality. These things 
cannot take place in that which is incongruous ; for 
that which is deformed is incongruous, but that 
which is beautiful is congruous with what is immortal 
and divine. Beauty is, therefore, the fate, and the 
Juno Lucina to generation. Wherefore, whenever 
that which is pregnant with the generative princi- 
ple, approaches that which is beautiful, it becomes 
transported with delight, and is poured forth in 
overflowing pleasure, and propagates. But when it 



approaches that which is deformed, it is contracted 
by sadness, and being repelled and checked, it does 
not produce, but retains unwillingly that with 
which it is pregnant. Wherefore, to one pregnant, 
and, as it were, already bursting with the load of 
his desire, the impulse towards that which is beau- 
tiful is intense, on account of the great pain of 
retaining that which he has conceived. Love, then, 
O Socrates, is not as you imagine the love of the 
beautiful.' — ' What, then ? ' — * Of generation and 
production in the beautiful.' — * Why then of gene- 
ration V — ' Generation is something eternal and 
immortal in mortality. It necessarily, from what 
has been confessed, follows, that we must desire 
immortality together with what is good, since Love 
is the desire that good be for ever present to us. 
Of necessity Love must also be the desire of 
immortality.' 

"Diotima taught me all this doctrine in the 
discourse we had together concerning Love ; and 
in addition, she enquired, 'What do you think, 
Socrates, is the cause of this love and desire ? Do 
you not perceive how all animals, both those of the 
earth and of the air, are affected when they desire 
the propagation of their species, affected even to 
weakness and disease by the impulse of their love ; 
first, longing to be mixed with each other, and then 
seeking nourishment for their offspring, so that the 
feeblest are ready to contend with the strongest in 
obedience to this law, and to die for the sake of 
their young, or to waste away with hunger, and 
do or suffer anything so that they may not want 
nourishment. It might be said that human beings 
do these things through reason, but can you explain 
why other animals are thus affected through love V 
— I confessed that I did not know. — 'Do you 
imagine yourself,' said she, 'to be skilful in the 
science of Love, if you are ignorant of these things V 
— ' As I said before, Diotima, I come to you, 
well knowing how much I am in need of a teacher. 
But explain to me, I entreat you, the cause of these 
things, and of the other things relating to Love.' — 
'If,' said Diotima, 'you believe that Love is of the 
same nature as we have mutually agreed upon, 
wonder not that such are its effects. For the 
mortal nature seeks, so far as it is able, to become 
deathless and eternal. But it can only accomplish 
this desire by generation, which for ever leaves 
another new in place of the old. For, although 
each human being be severally said to Live, and be 
the same from youth to old age, yet, that which is 
called the same, never contains within itself the 
same things, but always is becoming new by the 
loss and change of that which it possessed before ; 
both the hair, and the flesh, and the bones, and the 
entire bodv. 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



35 



" ' And not only does this change take place in 
the body, but also with respect to the soul. Man- 
ners, morals, opinions, desires, pleasures, sorrows, 
fears ; none of these ever remain unchanged in the 
same persons ; but some die away, and others are 
produced. And, what is yet more strange is, that 
not only does some knowledge spring up, and 
another decay, and that we are never the same 
with respect to our knowledge, but that each several 
object of our thoughts suffers the same revolution. 
That which is called meditation, or the exercise of 
memory, is the science of the escape or departure 
of memory ; for, forgetfulness is the going out 
of knowledge ; and meditation, calling up a new 
memory in the place of that which has departed, 
preserves knowledge ; so that, though for ever dis- 
placed and restored, it seems to be the same. In 
this manner every thing mortal is preserved : not 
that it is constant and eternal, like that which is 
divine ; but that in the place of what has grown old 
and is departed, it leaves another new like that 
which it was itself. By this contrivance, O 
Socrates, does what is mortal, the body and all 
other things, partake of immortality ; that which is 
immortal, is immortal in another manner. Wonder 
not, then, if every thing by nature cherishes that 
which was produced from itself, for this earnest 
Love is a tendency towards eternity.' 

" Having heard this discourse, I was astonished, 
and asked, 'Can these things be true, wisest 
Diotima V And she, like an accomplished sophist, 
said, ' Know well, O Socrates, that if you only 
regard that love of glory which inspires men, you 
will wonder at your own unskilfulness in not having 
discovered all that I now declare. Observe with 
how vehement a desire they are affected to become 
illustrious and to prolong their glory into immortal 
time, to attain which object, far more ardently than 
for the sake of their children, all men are ready to 
engage in many dangers, and expend their fortunes, 
and submit to any labours and incur any death. 
Do you believe that Alcestis would have died in 
the place of Admetus, or Achilles for the revenge 
of Patroclus, or Codrus for the kingdom of his 
posterity, if they had not believed that the immor- 
tal memory of their actions, which we now cherish, 
would have remained after their death ? Far other- 
wise ; all such deeds are done for the sake of ever- 
living virtue, and this immortal glory which they 
have obtained ; and inasmuch as any one is of an 
excellent nature, so much the more is he impelled 
to attain this reward. For they love what is 
immortal. 

" ' Those whose bodies alone are pregnant with 
this principle of immortality are attracted by women, 
seeking through the production of children what 



! they imagine to be happiness and immortality and 
an enduring remembrance ; but they whose souls 
are far more pregnant than their bodies, conceive 
and produce that which is more suitable to the soul. 
What is suitable to the soul ? Intelligence, and every 
other power and excellence of the mind ; of which 
all poets, and all other artists who are creative and 
inventive, are the authors. The greatest and most 
admirable wisdom is that which regulates the 
government of families and states, and which is 
called moderation and justice. Whosoever, there- 
fore, from his youth feels his soul pregnant with 
the conception of these excellences, is divine ; and 
when due time arrives, desires to bring forth ; and 
wandering about, he seeks the beautiful in which 
he may propagate what he has conceived ; for there 
is no generation in that which is deformed ; he 
embraces those bodies which are beautiful rather 
than those which are deformed, in obedience to the 
principle which is within him, which is ever seeking 
to perpetuate itself. And if he meets, in conjunc- 
tion with loveliness of form, a beautiful, generous 
and gentle soul, he embraces both at once, and 
immediately undertakes to educate tliis object of 
his love, and is inspired with an overflowing persua- 
sion to declare what is virtue, and what he ought 
to be who would attain to its possession, and what 
are the duties which it exacts. For, by the inter- 
course with, and as it were, the very touch of that 
which is beautiful, he brings forth and produces 
what he had formerly conceived ; and nourishes 
and educates that which is thus produced together 
with the object of his love, whose image, whether 
absent or present, is never divided from his mind. 
So that those who are thus united are linked by a 
nobler community and a firmer love, as being the 
common parents of a lovelier and more endearing 
progeny than the parents of other children. And 
every one who considers what posterity Homer and 
Hesiod, and the other great poets, have left behind 
them, the sources of their own immortal memory 
and renown, or what children of his soul Lycurgus 
has appointed to be the guardians, not only of 
Lacedaemon, but of all Greece ; or what an illus- 
trious progeny of laws Solon has produced, and 
how many admirable achievements, both among 
the Greeks and Barbarians, men have left as the 
pledges of that love which subsisted between them 
and the beautiful, would choose rather to be the 
parent of such children than those in a human 
shape. For divine honours have often been rendered 
to them on account of such children, but on account 
of those in human shape, never. 

" ' Your own meditation, O Socrates, might 
perhaps have initiated you in all these things 
which I have already taught you on the subject of 

D 2 



36 



THE BANQUET OV PIATO. 



Love. But those perfect and sublime ends, to 
wttch these are only the means, 1 knew not that 
you would have been competent to diseover. I 
will declare them, therefore, and will render them 
as intelligible as possible : do you meanwhile 
strain all your attention to trace the obscure 
depth of the subject. He who aspires to love 
rightly, ought from his earliest youth to seek an 
intercourse with beautiful forms, and first to make 
a single form the object of his love, and therein 
to generate intellectual excellences. He ought, 
then, to consider that beauty in whatever form it 
resides is the brother of that beauty which subsists 
in another form ; and if he ought to pursue that 
which is beautiful in form, it would be absurd to 
imagine that beauty is not one and the same 
thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much 
of his ardent preference towards one, through his 
perception of the multitude of claims upon his 
love. In addition, he would consider the beauty 
which is in souls more excellent than that which 
is in form. So that one endowed with an admi- 
rable soul, even though the flower of the form 
were withered, would suffice him as the object of 
his love and care, and the companion with whom 
he might seek and produce such conclusions as 
tend to the improvement of youth ; so that it 
might be led to observe the beauty and the con- 
formity which there is in the observation of its 
duties and the laws, and to esteem little the mere 
beauty of the outward form. He would then 
conduct his pupil to science, so that he might look 
upon the loveliness of wisdom ; and that contem- 
plating thus the universal beauty, no longer would 
he unworthily and meanly enslave himself to the 
attractions of one form in love, nor one subject of 
discipline or science, but would turn towards the 
wide ocean of intellectual beauty, and from the 
sight of the lovely and majestic forms which it 
contains, would abundantly bring forth his concep- 
tions in philosophy ; until, strengthened and con- 
firmed, he should at length steadily contemplate 
one science, which is the science of this universal 
beauty. 

" ' Attempt, I entreat you, to mark what I say 
with as keen an observation as you can. He who 
has been disciplined to this point in Love, by con- 
templating beautiful objects gradually, and in their 
order, now arriving at the end of all that concerns 
Love, on a sudden beholds a beauty wonderful in 
its nature. This is it, Socrates, for the sake of 
which all the former labours were endured. It is 
eternal, unproduced, indestructible ; neither sub- 
ject to increase nor decay : not, like other things, 
partly beautiful and partly deformed : not at one 
time beautiful and at another time not ; not beau- 



tiful in relation to one thing and deformed in re- 
lation to another ; not here beautiful and there 
deformed ; not beautiful in the estimation of one 
person and deformed in that of another ; nor can 
this supreme beauty be figured to the imagination 
like a beautiful face, or beautiful hands, or any 
portion of the body, nor like any discourse, nor 
any science. Nor does it subsist in any other 
that fives or is, either in earth, or in heaven, or 
in any other place ; but it is eternally uniform 
and consistent, and monoeidic with itself. All 
other things are beautiful through a participation 
of it, with this condition, that although they are 
subject to production and decay, it never becomes 
more or less, or endures any change. When any 
one, ascending from a correct system of Love, 
begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he 
already touches the consummation of his labour. 
For such as discipline themselves upon this sys- 
tem, or are conducted by another beginning to 
ascend through these transitory objects which are 
beautiful, towards that which is beauty itself, pro- 
ceeding as on steps from the love of one form to 
that of two, and from that of two, to that of all 
forms which are beautiful ; and from beautiful 
forms to beautiful habits and institutions, and from 
institutions to beautiful doctrines ; until, from the 
meditation of many doctrines, they arrive at that 
which is nothing else than the doctrine of the 
supreme beauty itself, in the knowledge and con- 
templation of which at length they repose. 

" ' Such a fife as this, my dear Socrates,' ex- 
claimed the stranger Prophetess, i spent in the 
contemplation of the beautiful, is the life for men 
to live ; which if you chance ever to experience, 
you will esteem far beyond gold and rich gar- 
ments, and even those lovely persons whom you 
and many others now gaze on with astonishment, 
and are prepared neither to eat nor drink so that 
you may behold and five for ever with these 
objects of your love ! What then shall we imagine 
to be the aspect of the supreme beauty itself, 
simple, pure, uncontaminated with the intermix- 
ture of human flesh and colours, and all other idle 
and unreal shapes attendant on mortality ; the 
divine, the original, the supreme, the monoeidic 
beautiful itself? What must be the life of him 
who dwells with and gazes on that which it 
becomes us all to seek % Think you not that to 
him alone is accorded the prerogative of bringing 
forth, not images and shadows of virtue, for he is 
in contact not with a shadow but with reality ; 
with virtue itself, in the production and nourish- 
ment of which he becomes dear to the Gods, and 
if such a privilege is conceded to any human being, 
himself immortal.' 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



" Such, Phcedrus, and my other friends, was 
what Diotiina said. And being persuaded by her 
words, I have since occupied myself in attempting 
to persuade others, that it is not easy to find a 
better assistant than Love in seeking to communi- 
cate immortality to our human natures. Where- 
fore I exhort every one to honour Love ; I hold 
him in honour, and chiefly exercise myself in 
amatory matters, and exhort others to do so ; 
and now and ever do I praise the power and 
excellence of Love, in the best manner that I can. 
Let this discourse, if it pleases you, Phoedrus, be 
considered as an encomium of Love ; or call it by 
what other name you will." 

The whole assembly praised his discourse, and 
Aristophanes was on the point of making some 
remarks on the allusion made by Socrates to 
him in a part of his discourse, when suddenly 
they heard a loud knocking at the door of the 
vestibule, and a clamour as of revellers, attended 
by a flute-player. — " Go, boys," said Agathon, 
" and see who is? there : if they are any of our 
friends, call them in ; if not, say that we have 
already done drinking." — A minute afterwards, 
they heard the voice of Alcibiades in the vestibule 
excessively drunk and roaring out : — " Where is 
Agathon ? Lead me to Agathon ! " — The flute- 
player, and some of his companions, then led him 
in, and placed him against the door-post, crowned 
with a thick crown of ivy and violets, and having 
a quantity of fillets on his head. — " My friends," 
he cried out, "hail ! I am excessively drunk 
already, but I '11 drink with you, if you will. 
If not, we will go away after having crowned 
Agathon, for which purpose I came. I assure 
you that I could not come yesterday, but I am 
now here with these fillets round my temples, 
that from my own head I may crown his who, 
with your leave, is the most beautiful and wisest 
of men. Are you laughing at me because I am 
drunk % Ay, I know what I say is true, whether 
you laugh or not. But tell me at once, whether I 
shall come in, or no. Will you drink with me?" 

Agathon and the whole party desired him to 
come in, and recline among them ; so he came 
in, led by his companions. He then unbound his 
fillets that he might crown Agathon, and though 
Socrates was just before his eyes, he did not see 
him, but sat down by Agathon, between Socrates 
and him, for Socrates moved out of the way to make 
room for him. When he sat down, he embraced 
Agathon and crowned him ; and Agathon desired 
the slaves to untie his sandals, that he might make 
a third, and recline on the same couch. " By all 
means," said Alcibiades, "but what third com- 
panion have we here ?" And at the same time 



turning round and seeing Socrates, he leaped up 
and cried out : — " Hercules ! what have we 
here ? You, Socrates, lying in ambush for me 
wherever I go ! and meeting me just as you always 
do, when I least expected to see you ! And, now, 
what are you come here for ? Why have you 
chosen to recline exactly in this place, and not 
near Aristophanes, or any one else who is, or 
wishes to be ridiculous, but have contrived to take 
your place beside the most delightful person of 
the whole party?" — "Agathon," said Socrates, 
" see if you cannot defend me. I declare my 
friendship for this man is a bad business : from 
the moment that I first began to know him I have 
never been permitted to converse with, or so much 
as to look upon any one else. If I do, he is so 
jealous and suspicious that he does the most extra- 
vagant things, and hardly refrains from beating 
me. I entreat you to prevent him from doing any- 
thing of that kind at present. Procure a recon- 
ciliation : or, if he perseveres in attempting any 
violence, I entreat you to defend me." — " Indeed," 
said Alcibiades, " I will not be reconciled to you ; 
I shall find another opportunity to punish you for 
this. But now," said he, addressing Agathon 
" lend me some of those fillets, that I may crown? 
the wonderful head of this fellow, lest I incur the 
blame, that having crowned you, I neglected to 
crown him who conquers all men with his discourses, 
not yesterday alone as you did, but ever." 

Saying this he took the fillets, and having bound 
the head of Socrates, and again having reclined, 
said : " Come, my friends, you seem to be sober 
enough. You must not flinch, but drink, for that 
was your agreement with me before I came in. I 
choose as president, until you have drunk enough — 
myself. Come, Agathon, if you have got a great 
goblet, fetch it out. But no matter, that wine- 
cooler will do ; bring it, boy !" And observing 
that it held more than eight cups, he first drank 
it off, and then ordered it to be filled for Socrates, 
and said : — " Observe, my friends, I cannot invent 
any scheme against Socrates, for he will drink as 
much as any one desires him, and not be in the 
least drunk." Socrates, after the boy had filled 
up, drank it off ; and Eryximachus said : — " Shall 
we then have no conversation or singing over our 
cups, but drink down stupidly, just as if we were 
thirsty 3" And Alcibiades said : — " Ah, Eryxima- 
chus, I did not see you before ; hail, you excellent 
son of a wise and excellent father !" — "Hail to 
you also,' ' replied Eryximachus, " but what shall 
we do ?" — " Whatever you command, for we ought 
to submit to your directions ; a physician is worth 
a hundred common men. Command us as you 
please." — " Listen then, " said Eryximachus ; 



38 



THE BANQUET OV PLATO. 



•• before you came in, each of us had •greed to de- 
liver as eloquent a discourse as he could in praise of 
Lots, beginning at the right hand ; all the rest of 
us have fulfilled oar engagement ; you have not 

spoken, and vet have drunk with us : you ought 
to bear your part in the discussion ; and having 
done BO, command what you please to Socrates, 
who shall have the privilege of doing so to his 
right-hand neighbour, and so on to the others." — 
•• Indeed, there appears some justice in your pro- 
posal, Eryximachus, though it is rather unfair to 
induce a drunken man to set his discourse in com- 
petition with that of those who are sober. And, 
besides, did Socrates really persuade you that 
what he just said about me was true, or do you 
not know that matters are in fact exactly the 
reverse of his representation ? For I seriously 
believe that, should I praise in his presence, 
be he god or man, any other beside himself, he 
would not keep his hands off me. But I assure 
you, Socrates, I will praise no one beside yourself, 
in your presence." 

"Do so, then," said Eryximachus ; "praise 
Socrates if you please." — " What !" saidAlcibiades, 
" shall I attack him, and punish him before you all !" 
— " What have you got into your head now," said 
Socrates ; " are you going to expose me to ridicule, 
and to misrepresent me ? Or what are you going 
to do ?" — " I will only speak the truth ; will you per- 
mit me on this condition V — "I not only permit, but 
exhort you to say all the truth you know," replied 
Socrates. " I obey you willingly," said Alcibiades ; 
" and if I advance anything untrue, do you, if you 
please, interrupt me, and convict me of misrepre- 
sentation, for I would never willingly speak falsely. 
And bear with me if I do not relate things in their 
order, but just as I remember them, for it is not 
easy for a man in my present condition to enume- 
rate systematically all your singularities. 

" I will begin the praise of Socrates by comparing 
him to a certain statue. Perhaps he will think 
that this statue is introduced for the sake of ridi- 
cule, but I assure you that it is necessary for the 
illustration of truth. I assert, then, that Socrates 
is exactly like those Silenuses that sit in the sculp- 
tors' shops, and which are carved holding flutes or 
pipes, but which, when divided into two, are found 
to contain withinside the images of the gods. I 
assert that Socrates is like the satyr Marsyas. 
That your form and appearance are like these 
satyrs, I think that even you will not venture to 
deny ; and how like you are to them in all other 
things, now hear. Are you not scornful and 
petulant ? If you deny this, I will bring witnesses. 
Are you not a piper, and far more wonderful a one 
than he \ For Marsyas, and whoever now pipes 



the music that he taught ; for that music which is 
oi"hea\ en, and described as being taught by Marsyas, 
enchants men through the power of the mouth. 
For if any musician, be he skilful or not, awakens 
this music, it alone enables liim to retain the minds 
of men, and from the divinity of its nature makes 
evident those who arc in want of the gods and 
initiation. You differ only from Marsyas in this 
circumstance, that you effect without instruments, 
by mere words, all that he can do. For when we 
hear Pericles, or any other accomplished orator, 
deliver a discourse, no one, as it were, cares any 
tiring about it. But when any one hears you, or 
even your words related by another, though ever 
so rude and unskilful a speaker, be that person a 
woman, man or child, we are struck and retained, 
as it were, by the discourse clinging to our mind. 

" If I was not afraid that I am a great deal too 
drunk, I would confirm to you by an oath the 
strange effects which I assure you I have suffered 
from his words, and suffer still ; for when I hear 
him speak, my heart leaps up far more than the 
hearts of those who celebrate the Corybantic myste- 
ries ; my tears are poured out as he talks, a thing 
I have seen happen to many others beside myself. 
I have heard Pericles and other excellent orators, 
and have been pleased with their discourses, but 
I suffered nothing of this kind ; nor was my soul 
ever on those occasions disturbed and filled with 
self-reproach, as if it were slavishly laid prostrate. 
But this Marsyas here has often affected me in the 
way I describe, until the life which I lead seemed 
hardly worth riving. Do not deny it, Socrates ; for 
I well know that if even now I chose to listen to 
you, I could not resist, but should again suffer the 
same effects. For, my friends, he forces me to 
confess that while I myself am still in want of 
many things, I neglect my own necessities, and 
attend to those of the Athenians. I stop my ears, 
therefore, as from the Syrens, and flee away as 
fast as possible, that I may not sit down beside 
him and grow old in listening to his talk. For 
this man has reduced me to feel the sentiment of 
shame,which I imagineno one would readily believe 
was in me ; he alone inspires me with remorse and 
awe. For I feel in his presence my incapacity of 
refuting what he says, or of refusing to do that 
which he directs ; but when I depart from him, 
the glory which the multitude confers overwhelms 
me. I escape, therefore, and hide myself from him, 
and when I see him I am overwhelmed with humi- 
liation, because I have neglected to do what I have 
confessed to him ought to be done ; and often and 
often have I wished that he were no longer to be 
seen among men. But if that were to happen, I 
well know that I should suffer far greater pain ; so 



THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 



39 



that whore I can turn, or what I can do with this 
man, I know not. All this have I and many 
others suffered from the pipings of this satyr. 

" And observe how like he is to what I said, 
and what a wonderful power he possesses. Know 
that there is not oue of you who is aware of the 
real nature of Socrates ; but since I have begun, I 
will make him plain to you. You observe how 
passionately Socrates affects the intimacy of those 
who are beautiful, and how ignorant he professes 
himself to be ; appearances in themselves exces- 
sively Silenic. This, my friends, is the external 
form with winch, like one of the sculptured Sileni, 
he has clothed himself ; for if you open him, you 
will find within admirable temperance and wisdom. 
For he cares not for mere beauty, but despises 
more than any one can imagine all external pos- 
sessions, whether it be beauty or wealth, or glory, 
or any other thing for which the multitude felici- 
tates the possessor. He esteems these things and 
us who honour them, as nothing, and lives among 
men, making all the objects of their admiration 
the playthings of his irony. But I know not if 
any one of you have ever seen the divine images 
which are within, when he has been opened and is 
serious. I have seen them, and they are so 
supremely beautiful, so golden, so divine, and 
wonderful, that every tiling which Socrates com- 
mands surely ought to be obeyed, even like the 
voice of a God. 

***** 

" At one time we were fellow-soldiers, and had 
our mess together in the camp before Potidsea. 
Socrates there overcame not only me, but every 
one beside, in endurance of toils : when, as often 
happens in a campaign, we were reduced to few 
provisions, there were none who could sustain 
hunger like Socrates ; and when we had plenty, he 
alone seemed to enjoy our military fare. He never 
drank much willingly, but when he was compelled, 
he conquered all even in that to which he was 
least accustomed ; and what is most astonishing, 
no person ever saw Socrates drunk either then or 
at any other time. In the depth of winter (and 
the winters there are excessively rigid), he sus- 
tained calmly incredible hardships : and amongst 
other things, whilst the frost was intolerably severe, 
and no one went out of their tents, or if they went 
out, wrapt themselves up carefully, and put fleeces 
under their feet, and bound their legs with hairy 
skins, Socrates went out only with the same cloak 
on that he usually wore, and walked barefoot upon 
the ice ; more easily, indeed, than those who load 
sandalled themselves so delicately : so that the 
soldiers thought that he did it to mock their want 
of fortitude. It would indeed be worth while to 



commemorate all that this brave man did and 
endured in that expedition. In one instance he 
was seen early in the morning, standing in one 
place wrapt in meditation ; and as he seemed not 
to be able to unravel the subject of his thoughts, 
he still continued to stand as enquiring and dis- 
cussing within himself, and when noon came, the 
soldiers observed him, and said to one another — 
' Socrates has been standing there thinking, ever 
since the morning.' At last some Ionians came 
to the spot, and having supped, as it was summer, 
bringing their blankets, they lay down to sleep in 
the cool ; they observed that Socrates continued 
to stand there the whole night until morning, and 
that, when the smi rose, he saluted it with a 
prayer and departed. 

" I ought not to omit what Socrates is in battle. 
For in that battle after which the generals decreed 
to me the prize of courage, Socrates alone of all 
men was the saviour of my life, standing by me 
when I had fallen and was wounded, and preserving 
both myself and my arms from the hands of the 
enemy. On that occasion I entreated the generals 
to decree the prize, as it was most due, to him. 
And tins, O Socrates, you cannot deny, that while 
the generals, wishing to conciliate a person of my 
rank, desired to give me the prize, you were far 
more earnestly desirous than the generals that this 
glory should be attributed not to yourself, but me. 

<( But to see Socrates when our army was de- 
feated and scattered in flight at Delius, was a 
spectacle worthy to behold. On that occasion I 
was among the cavalry, and he on foot, heavily 
armed. After the total rout of our troops, he and 
Laches retreated together ; I came up by chance, 
and seeing them, bade them be of good cheer, for 
that I would not leave them. As I was on horse- 
back, and therefore less occupied by a regard of 
my own situation, I could better observe than at 
Potidaea the beautiful spectacle exhibited by 
Socrates on this emergency. How superior was 
he to Laches in presence of mind and courage ! 
Your representation of him on the stage, Aris- 
tophanes, was not wholly unlike his real self on 
this occasion, for he walked and darted his regards 
around with a majestic composure, looking tran- 
quilly both on his friends and enemies ; so that it 
was evident to every one, even from afar, that 
whoever should venture to attack him would en- 
counter a desperate resistance. He and his com- 
panion thus departed in safety ; for those who 
are scattered in flight are pursued and killed, 
whilst men hesitate to touch those who exhibit 
such a countenance as that of Socrates even in 
defeat. 

" Many other and most wonderful qualities could 



40 



TIIK BANQUET OF PLATO. 



well be praised in Socrates ; but such as these 
might singly be Attributed to others. Hut that 

which is unparalleled in Socrates, is, that he is 
unlike, and above comparison, with all other men, 
whether those who have lived in aneient times, or 
those who exist now. For it may be conjectured, 
that Brasidas and many others are sncfa as was 
Aehilles. Pericles deserves comparison with Nestor 
and Antenor ; and other excellent persons of various 
times may, with probability, be drawn into com- 
parison with each other. But to such a singular 
man as this, both himself and his discourses being 
so uncommon, no one, should he seek, would find a 
parallel among the present or the past generations 
of mankind ; unless they should say that he resem- 
bled those with whom I lately compared him, for, 
assuredly, he and his discourses are like nothing 
but the Sileni and the Satyrs. At first I forgot to 
make you observe how like his discourses are to 
those Satyrs when they are opened, for, if any one 
will listen to the talk of Socrates, it will appear to 
him at first extremely ridiculous ; the phrases and 
expressions which he employs, fold around his 
exterior the skin, as it were, of a rude and wanton 
Satyr. He is always talking about great market- 
asses, and brass-founders, and leather-cutters, and 
skin-dressers ; and this is his perpetual custom, so 
that any dull and unobservant person might easily 
laugh at his discourse. But if any one should see 
it opened, as it were, and get within the sense of 
his words, he would then find that they alone of 
all that enters into the mind of man to utter, had a 
profound and persuasive meaning, and that they 
were most divine ; and that they presented to the 
mind innumerable images of every excellence, and 
that they tended towards objects of the highest 
moment, or rather towards all, that he who seeks 
the possession of what is supremely beautiful and 
good, need regard as essential to the accomplish- 
ment of his ambition. 

" These are the things, my friends, for which 
I praise Socrates." 

***** 

Alcibiades having said this, the whole party 
burst into a laugh at his fraukness, and Socrates 
said, " You seem to he sober enough, Alcibiades, 
else you would not have made such a circuit of 
words, only to hide the main design for which you 
made this long speech, and which, as it were care- 
lessly, you just throw in at the last ; now, as if 
you had not said all this for the mere purpose of 
dividing me and Agathon % You think that I ought 
to be your friend, and to care for no one else. I 
have found you out ; it is evident enough for what 



design you invented all this Satyrical and Silenic 
drama. But, my dear Agathon, do not let his 
device succeed. I entreat you to permit no one to 
throw discord between us." — "No doubt," said 
Agathon, "he sate down between us only that he 
might divide us ; but this shall not assist his scheme, 
for I will come and sit near you." — " Do so," said 
Socrates, " come, there is room for you by me." — 
" Oh, Jupiter ! " exclaimed Alcibiades, " what I 
endure from that man ! He thinks to subdue every 
way ; but, at least, I pray you, let Agathon remain 
between us." — " Impossible," said Socrates, " you 
have just praised me ; I ought to praise him sitting 
at my right hand. If Agathon is placed beside 
you, will he not praise me before I praise him ? 
Now, my dear friend, allow the young man to 
receive what praise I can give him. I have a 
great desire to pronounce his encomium." — " Quick, 
quick, Alcibiades," said Agathon, " I cannot stay 
here, I must change my place, or Socrates will not 
praise me." — Agathon then arose to take his place 
near Socrates. 

He had no sooner reclined than there came in a 
number of revellers — for some one who had gone 
out had left the door open — and took their places 
on the vacant couches, and everything became full 
of confusion ; and no order being observed, every 
one was obliged to drink a great quantity of wine. 
Eryximachus, and Phsedrus, and some others, said 
Aristodemus went home to bed ; that, for his part, 
he went to sleep on his couch, and slept long and 
soundly — the nights were then long — until the cock 
crew in the morning. When he awoke he found 
that some were still fast asleep, and others had 
gone home, and that Aristophanes, Agathon, and 
Socrates had alone stood it out, and were still 
drinking out of a great goblet which they passed 
round and round. Socrates was disputing between 
them. The beginning of their discussion Aristo- 
demus said that he did not recollect, because he 
was asleep ; but it was terminated by Socrates 
forcing them to confess, that the same person is 
able to compose both tragedy and comedy, and 
that the foundations of the tragic and comic arts 
were essentially the same. They, rather convicted 
than convinced, went to sleep. Aristophanes first 
awoke, and then, it being broad daylight, Agathon. 
Socrates, having put them to sleep, went away, 
Aristodemus following him, and coming to the 
Lyceum he washed himself, as he would have done 
anywhere else, and after having spent the day there 
in his accustomed manner, went home in the 
evening. 



ON LOVE. 



{ What is love ? Ask him who lives, what is life \ 
\ask him who adores, what is God ? 

1 know not the internal constitution of other 
men, nor even thine, whom I now address. I see 
that in some external attributes they resemble me, 
but when, misled by that appearance, I have 
thought to appeal to something in common, and 
unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have found 
my language misunderstood, like one in a distant 
and savage land. The more opportunities they 
have afforded me for experience, the wider has 
appeared the interval between us, and to a greater 
distance have the points of sympathy been with- 
drawn. With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such 
proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, 
I have everywhere sought sympathy, and have 
found only repulse and disappointment. 

Thou demandest what is love ? It is that power- 
ful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, 
or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within 
our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, 
and seek to awaken in all things that are, a com- 
munity with what we experience within ourselves. 
If we reason, we would be understood ; if we 
imagine, we would that the airy children of our 
brain were born anew within another's ; if we 
feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate 
to our own, that the beams of their eyes should 
kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that 
lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips 
quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. 
This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction 
which connects not only man with man, but with 
every thing which exists. We are born into the 
world, and there is something within us which, 
from the instant that we five, more and more 
thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in corre- 
spondence with this law that the infant drains milk 
from the bosom of its mother ; this propensity 
develops itself with the development of our nature. 
We dimly see •within our intellectual nature a 
miniature as it were of our entire self, yet de- 
prived of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal 
prototype of every thing excellent or lovely that 
we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the 



nature of man. Not only the portrait of our 
external being, but an assemblage of the minutest 
particles of which our nature is composed * ; a 
mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of 
purity and brightness ; a soul within our soul that 
describes a circle around its proper paradise, which 
pain, and sorrow, and evil dare not overleap. To 
this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that 
they should resemble or correspond with it. The 
discovery of its antitype ; the meeting with an 
understanding capable of clearly estimating our 
own ; an imagination which should enter into and 
seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities 
which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in 
secret ; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords 
of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompani- 
ment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibra- 
tions of our own ; and of a combination of all these 
in such proportion as the type within demands ; 
this is the invisible and unattainable point to which 
Love tends ; and to attain which, it urges forth 
the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of 
that, without the possession of which there is no 
rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. 
Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when 
we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they 
sympathise not with us, we love the flowers, the 
grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motion 
of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there 
is then found a secret correspondence with our 
heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, 
and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling 
of the reeds beside them, which by their incon- 
ceivable relation to something within the soul, 
awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, 
and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the 
eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or 
the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. 
Sterne says that, if he were in a desert, he would 
love some cypress. So soon as this want or power 
is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of him- 
self, and what yet survives is the mere husk of 
what once he was. 

* These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most 
words are so — No help ! 



THE COLISEUM. 



8 dTracjmcnt. 



A r die hour of noon, on the feastof the Passover, 
an old man, accompanied by a girl, apparently his 
daughter, entered the Coliseum at Home. They 
immediately passed through the Arena, and seek- 
ing a solitary chasm among the arches of the 
southern part of the ruin, selected a fallen column 
tor their seat, and clasping each other's hands, sate 
as in silent contemplation of the scene. But the 
eyes of the girl were fixed upon her father's lips, 
and his countenance, sublime and sweet, but 
motionless as some Praxitelean image of the 
greatest of poets, filled the silent air with smiles, 
not reflected from external forms. 

It was the great feast of the Resurrection, and 
the whole native population of Rome, together 
with all the foreigners who flock from all parts of 
the earth to contemplate its celebration, were 
assembled round the Vatican. The most awful 
religion of the world went forth surrounded by 
emblazonry of mortal greatness, and mankind had 
assembled to wonder at and worship the creations 
of their own power. No straggler was to be met 
with in the streets and grassy lanes which led to 
the Coliseum. The father and daughter had sought 
this spot immediately on their arrival. 

A figure, only visible at Rome in night or soli- 
tude, and then only to be seen amid the desolated 
temples of the Forum, or gliding among the weed- 
grown galleries of the Coliseum, crossed their path. 
His form, which, though emaciated, displayed the 
elementary outlines of exquisite grace, was enve- 
loped in an ancient chlamys, which half concealed 
his face ; his snow-white feet were fitted with ivory 
sandals, delicately sculptured in the likeness of two 
female figures, whose wings met upon the heel, and 
whose eager and half-divided lips seemed quiver- 
ing to meet. It was a face, once seen, never 
to be forgotten. The mouth and the moulding 
of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned 
tenderness of the statues of Antinous ; but in- 
stead of the effeminate sullenness of the eye, and 
the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an 
expression of profound and piercing thought ; the 
brow was clear and open, and his eyes deep, like 
two wells of crystalline water which reflect the 
all-beholding heavens. Over all was spread a timid 
expression of womanish tenderness and hesitation, 
which contrasted, yet intermingled strangely, with 



the abstracted and fearless character that predo- 
minated in his form and gestures. 

He avoided, in an extraordinary degree, all 
communication with the Italians, whose language 
he seemed scarcely to understand, but was occa- 
sionally seen to converse with some accomplished 
foreigner, whose gestures and appearance might 
attract him amid his solemn haunts. He spoke 
Latin, and especially Greek, with fluency, and with 
a peculiar but sweet accent ; he had apparently 
acquired a knowledge of the northern languages of 
Europe. There was no circumstance connected 
with him that gave the least intimation of his 
country, his origin, or his occupation. His dress 
was strange, but splendid and solemn. He was 
forever alone. The literati of Rome thought him 
a curiosity, but there was something in his manner 
uninteUigible but impressive, which awed their 
obtrusions into distance and silence. The country- 
men, whose path he rarely crossed, returning by 
starlight from their market at Campo Vaccino, 
called him, with that strange mixture of religious 
and historical ideas so common in Italy, 11 Diavolo 
di Bruto. 

Such was the figure which interrupted the con- 
templations, if they were so engaged, of the 
strangers, by addressing them in the clear, and 
exact, but unidiomatic phrases of their native lan- 
guage : — " Strangers, you are two ; behold the third 
in this great city, to whom alone the spectacle 
of these mighty ruins is more delightful than 
the mockeries of a superstition which destroyed 
them." 

u I see nothing," said the old man. 

« What do you here, then V 

" I listen to the sweet singing of the birds, and 
the sound of my daughter's breathing composes me 
like the soft murmur of water — and I feel the sun- 
warm wind — and this is pleasant to me." 

" Wretched old man, know you not that these 
are the ruins of the Coliseum ?" — 

" Alas ! stranger," said the girl, in a voice like' 
mournful music, " speak not so — he is blind." — 

The stranger's eyes were suddenly filled with 
tears, and the lines of his countenance became 
relaxed. « Blind !" he exclaimed, in a tone of 
suffering, which was more than an apology ; and 
seated himself apart on a flight of shattered and 






THE COLISEUM. 



mossy stairs which wound up among the labyrinths 
of the ruin. 

" My sweet Helen," said the old man, " you did 
not tell me that this was the Coliseum ?" 

" How should I tell yon, dearest father, what I 
knew not ? I was on the point of enquiring the way 
to that building, when we entered this circle of ruins, 
and, until the stranger ac-eosted us, I remained 
silent, subdued by the greatness of what I see." 

" It is your custom, sweetest child, to describe 
to me the objects that give you delight. You 
array them in the soft radiance of your words, 
and whilst you speak I only feel the infirmity 
which holds me in such dear dependence, as a 
blessing. Why have you been silent now ?" 

" I know not — first the wonder and pleasure of 
the sight, then the words of the stranger, and then 
thinking on what he had said, and how he had 
looked — and now, beloved father, your own words." 

" Well, tell me now, what do you see ?" 

" I see a great circle of arches built upon arches, 
and shattered stones he around, that once made a 
part of the solid wall. In the crevices, and on the 
vaulted roofs, grow a multitude of shrubs, the wild 
olive and the myrtle — and intricate brambles, and 
entangled weeds and plants I never saw before. 
The stones are immensely massive, and they jut 
out one from the other. There are terrible rifts 
in the wall, and broad windows through which you 
see the blue heaven. There seems to be more than 
a thousand arches, some ruined, some entire, and 
they are all immensely high and wide. Some are 
shattered, and stand forth in great heaps, and the 
underwood is tufted on their crumbling summits. 
Around us lie enormous columns, shattered and 
shapeless — and fragments of capitals and cornice, 
fretted with delicate sculptures." — 

" It is open to the blue sky \ " said the old man. 

"Yes. We see the liquid depth of heaven 
above through the rifts and the windows ; and 
the flowers, and the weeds, and the grass and 
creeping moss, are nourished by its unforbidden 
rain. The blue sky is above — the wide, bright, 
blue sky— it flows through the great rents on 
high, and through the bare boughs of the marble 
rooted fig-tree, and through the leaves and flowers 
of the weeds, even to the dark arcades beneath. 
I see — I feel its clear and piercing beams fill the 
universe, and impregnate the joy-inspiring wind 
with life and light, and casting the veil of its 
splendour over all things — even me. Yes, and 
through the highest rift the noonday waning 
moon is hanging, as it were, out of the solid sky, 
and this shows that the atmosphere has all the 
clearness which it rejoices me that you feel." 
"What else see you?" 



" Nothing." 

" Nothing \ " 

" Only the bright-green mossy ground, speckled 

by tufts of dewy clover-grass that run into the 
interstices of the shattered arches, and round the 
isolated pinnacles of the ruin." 

" Like the lawny dells of soft short gl 
which wind among the pine forests and preci- 
pices in the Alps of Savoy ? " 

" Indeed, father, your eye has a vision more 
serene than mine." 

" And the great wrecked arches, the shattered 
masses of precipitous ruin, overgrown with the 
younglings of the forest, and more like chasms 
rent by an earthquake among the mountains, than 
like the vestige of what was human workmanship 
— what are they % " 

" Things awe-inspiring and wonderful." 

" Are they not caverns such as the untamed 
elephant might choose, amid the Indian wilder- 
ness, wherein to hide her cubs ; such as, were the 
sea to overflow the earth, the mightiest monsters 
of the deep would change into their spacious 
chambers \ " 

" Father, your words image forth what I would 
have expressed, but, alas ! could not." 

" I hear the rustling of leaves, and the sound 
of waters, — but it does not ram, — like the fast 
drops of a fountain among woods." 

"It falls from among the heaps of ruin over 
our heads — it is, I suppose, the water collected in 
the rifts by the showers." 

" A nursling of man's art, abandoned by his 
care, and transformed by the enchantment of 
Nature into a likeness of her own creations, and 
destined to partake their immortality ! Changed 
into a mountain cloven with woody dells, which 
overhang its labyrinthine glades, and shattered 
into toppling precipices. Even the clouds, inter- 
cepted by its craggy summit, feed its eternal 
fountains with then* rain. By the column on 
which I sit, I should judge that it had once been 
crowned by a temple or a theatre, and that on 
sacred days the multitude wound up its craggy 

path to spectacle or the sacrifice It was such 

itself ! * Helen, what sound of wings is that \ " 

* Nor does a recollection of the use to which it may 
have been destined interfere with these emotions. Time 
has thrown its purple shadow athwart this scene, and no 
more is visible than the broad and everlasting character 
of human strength and genius, that pledge of all that is to 
be admirable and lovely in ages yet to come. Solemn tem- 
ples, where the senate of the world assembled, palaces, 
triumphal arches, and cloud-surrounded columns, loaded 
with the sculptured annals of conquest and domination — 
what actions and deliberations have they been destined to 
enclose and commemorate ? Superstitious rites, which in 
their mildest form, outrage reason, and obscure the moral 
sense of mankind ; schemes for wide-extended murder, 



44 



THE COLISEUM. 



« It is the wild pigeons retomung to their 
young. Do yon not hear the murmur of those 
that aiv brooding in their nest 

•• Ay, it is the language of tlu-ir happi 
They en as happy as * e are, child, but in a 
different manner. They know not the sensations 
which this ruin excites within us. Yet it is plea- 
sure to them to inhabit it ; and the succession 
of its forms as they pass, is connected « ith asso- 
ciations in their minds, sacred to them, as these 
to us. The internal nature of each being is sur- 
romuled by a circle, not to be surmounted by his 
fellows ; and it is this repulsion which constitutes 
the misfortune of the condition of life. But there 
is a circle which comprehends, as well as one 
which mutually excludes, all things which feel. 
And, with respect to man, his public and his 
private happiness consist in diminishing the cir- 
cumference which includes those resembling him- 
self, until they become one with him, and he with 
them. It is because we enter into the medita- 
tions, designs and destinies of something beyond 
ourselves, that the contemplation of the ruins 
of human power excites an elevating sense of 
awfulness and beauty. It is therefore that the 
ocean, the glacier, the cataract, the tempest, the 
volcano, have each a spirit which animates the 
extremities of our frame with tingling joy. It 
is therefore that the singing of birds, and the 
motion of leaves, the sensation of the odorous 
earth beneath, and the freshness of the living 
wind around, is sweet. ■ And this is Love. This 
is the religion of eternity, whose votaries have 
been exiled from among the multitude of man- 
kind. Power !" cried the old man, lifting 
his sightless eyes towards the undazzling sun, 
a thou which interpenetratest all things, and with- 
out which ^this glorious world were a blind and 
formless chaos, Love, Author of Good, God, King, 
Father ! Friend of these thy worshippers ! Two 
solitary hearts invoke thee, may they be divided 
never ! If the contentions of mankind have been 
their misery ; if to give and seek that happiness 
which thou art, has been their choice and destiny ; 
if, in the contemplation of these majestic records 
of the power of their kind, they see the shadow 



and devastation, and misrule, and servitude; and, lastly, 
these schemes brought to their tremendous consumma- 
tions, and a human being returning in the midst of 
festival and solemn joy, with thousands and thousands of 
his enslaved and desolated species chained behind his 
chariot, exhibiting, as titles to renown, the labour of ages, 
and the admired creations of genius, overthrown by the 
brutal force, which was placed as a sword within his 
hand, and, — contemplation fearful and abhorred ! — be 
himself a being capable of the gentlest and best emotions, 
inspired with the persuasion that he has done a virtuous 
deed ! We do not forget these things. * * 



and the prophecy of that which thou mayst have 
decreed that he should become ; if the justice, the 
liberty, the loveliness, the truth, which arc thy 
footsteps, have been sought by them, divide them 
not ! It is thine to unite, to eternize ; to make 
outlive the limits of the grave those who have left 
among the living, memorials of thee. When this 
frame shall be senseless dust, may the hopes, and 
the desires, and the delights which animate it now, 
never be extinguished in my child ; even as, if 
she were borne into the tomb, my memory would 
be the written monument of all her nameless 
excellences !" 

The old man's countenance and gestures, radiant 
with the inspiration of his words, sunk, as he ceased, 
into more than its accustomed calmness, for he 
heard his daughter's sobs, and remembered that 
he had spoken of death. — " My father, how can I 
outlive you ?" said Helen. 

" Do not let us talk of death," said the old man, 
suddenly changing his tone. " Heraclitus, indeed, 
died at my age, and if I had so sour a disposition, 
there might be some danger. But Democritus 
reached a hundred and twenty, by the mere dint 
of a j oyous and unconquerable mind. He only died 
at last, because he had no gentle and beloved 
ministering spirit, like my Helen, for whom it would 
have been his delight to live. You remember his 
gay old sister requested him to put off starving 
himself to death until she had returned from the 
festival of Ceres ; alleging, that it would spoil her 
holiday if he refused to comply, as it was not 
permitted to appear in the procession immediately 
after the death of a relation ; and how good-tem- 
peredly the sage acceded to her request." 

The old man could not see his daughter's grateful 
smile, but he felt the pressure of her hand by which 
it was expressed. — " In truth," he continued, " that 
mystery, death, is a change which neither for 
ourselves nor for others is the just object of hope 
or fear. "We know not if it be good or evil, we 
only know, it is. The old, the young, may alike die ; 
no time, no place, no age, no foresight, exempts us 
from death, and the chance of death. We have 
no knowledge, if death be a state of sensation, of 
any precaution that can make those sensations 
fortunate, if the existing series of events shall not 
produce that effect. Think not of death, or dunk 
of it as something common to us ail. It has hap- 
pened," said he, with a deep and suffering voice, 
" that men have buried their children." 

" Alas ! then, dearest father, how I pity you. 
Let us speak no more." 

They arose to depart from the Coliseum, but the 
figure which had first accosted them interposed 
itself : — " Lady," he said, " if grief be an expiation 



THE ASSASSINS. 



01 error, 1 have gift \nl deeply for the words which 
I spoke to your companion. The men who an- 
ciently inhabited this spot, and those from whom 
they learned their wisdom, respected infirmity and 
age. If I have rashly violated that venerable form, 
at once majestic and defenceless, may I be for- 
given ? " 

" It gives me pain to see how much your mistake 
afflicts you," she said ; " if you can forget, doubt 
not that we forgive/' 

u You thought me one of those who are blind in 
spirit," said the old man, " and who deserve, if any 
human being can deserve, contempt and blame. 
Assuredly, contemplating this monument as I do, 
though in the mirror of my daughter's mind, I am 
filled with astonishment and delight ; the spirit of 
departed generations seems to animate my limbs, 
and circulate through all the fibres of my frame. 
Stranger, if I have expressed what you have ever 
felt, let us know each other more " 



"The sound of your voice, and the harmony of 
your thoughts, are delightful to me," said the 
youth, " and it is a pleasure to see any form 
which expresses so much beauty and goodness as 
your daughter's ; if you reward me for my rude- 
ness, by allowing me to know you, my error is 
already expiated, and you remember my ill words 
no more. I live a solitary life, and it is rare that 
1 encounter any stranger with whom it is pleasant 
to talk ; besides, their meditations, even though 
they be learned, do not always agree with mine ; 
and, though I can pardon this difference, they 
cannot. Nor have I ever explained the cause 
of the dress I wear, and the difference which I 
perceive between my language and manners, and 
those with whom I have intercourse. Not but 
that it is painful to me to five without communion 
with intelligent and affectionate beings. You are 
such, I feel." 



THE ASSASSINS. 
& dfrasment of a Romance. 



CHAPTER I. 

Jerusalem, goaded on to resistance by the inces- 
sant usurpations and insolence of Rome, leagued 
together its discordant factions to rebel against 
the common enemy and tyrant. Inferior to their 
foe in all but the unconquerable hope of liberty, 
they surrounded their city with fortifications of 
uncommon strength, and placed in array before 
the temple a band rendered desperate by patriotism 
and religion. Even th** women preferred to die, 
rather than survive the ruin of their country. 
"When the Roman army approached the walls of 
the sacred city, its preparations, its discipline, and 
its numbers, evinced the conviction of its leader, 
that he had no common barbarians to subdue. At 
the approach of the Roman army, the strangers 
withdrew from the city. 

Among the multitudes which from every nation 
of the East had assembled at Jerusalem, was a little 
congregation of Christians. They were remark- 
able neither for their numbers nor their importance. 
They contained among them neither philosophers 
nor poets. Acknowledging no laws but those of 
God, they modelled their conduct towards their 
fellow-men by the conclusions of their individual 
judgment on the practical application of these 
laws. And it was apparent from the simplicity 
and severity of their manners, that this contempt 



for human institutions had produced among them 
a character superior in singleness and sincere self- 
apprehension to the slavery of pagan customs and 
the gross delusions of antiquated superstition. 
Many of their opinions considerably resembled 
those of the sect afterwards known by the name of 
Gnostics. They esteemed the human understanding 
to be the paramount rule of human conduct ; they 
maintained that the obscurest religious truth re- 
quired for its complete elucidation no more than the 
strenuous application of the energies of mind. It ap- 
peared impossible to them that any doctrine could 
be subversive of social happiness which is not capa- 
ble of being confuted by arguments derived from 
the nature of existing things. With the devoutest 
submission to the law of Christ; they united an 
intrepid spirit of inquiry as to the correctest mode 
of acting in particular instances of conduct that 
occur among men. Assuming the doctrines of the 
Messiah concerning benevolence and justice fer 
the regulation of their actions, they could not be 
persuaded to acknowledge that there was apparent 
in the divine code any prescribed rule whereby, for 
its own sake, one action rather than another, as 
fulfilling the will of their great Master, should be 
preferred. 

The contempt with which the magistracy and 
priesthood regarded this obscure community cf 



i6 



THE ASSASSINS. 



speculators, had hitherto protected thorn from 
persecution. But they hail arrived at that precise 
degree of eminence end prosperity which is pecu- 
liarly obnoxious to the hostility of the rich and 
powerful. The moment of their departure from 
Jerusalem was the crisis of their future destiny. 
Had they continued to seek a precarious refuge in 
a city of the Roman empire, this persecution would 
not have delayed to impress anew character on 
their opinions and their conduct ; narrow views, 
and the illibcrality of sectarian patriotism, would 
not have failed speedily to obliterate the magnifi- 
cence and beauty of their wild and wonderful con- 
dition. 

Attached from principle to peace, despising and 
hating the pleasures and the customs of the dege- 
nerate mass of mankind, this unostentatious com- 
munity of good and happy men fled to the solitudes 
of Lebanon. To Arabians and enthusiasts the solem- 
nity and grandeur of these desolate recesses pos- 
sessed peculiar attractions. It well accorded with 
the justice of their conceptions on the relative du- 
ties of man towards his fellow in society, that they 
should labour in unconstrained equality to dis- 
possess the wolf and the tiger of their empire, and 
establish on its ruins the dominion of intelligence 
and virtue. No longer would the worshippers of 
the God of Nature be indebted to a hundred hands 
for the accommodation of their simple wants. No 
longer would the poison of a diseased civilisation 
embrue their very nutriment with pestilence. They 
would no longer owe their very existence to the 
vices, the fears, and the follies of mankind. Love, 
friendship, and philanthropy, would now be the 
characteristic disposers of their industry. It is for 
his mistress or his friend that the labourer conse- 
crates his toil ; others are mindful, but he is for- 
getful, of himself. " God feeds the hungry ravens, 
and clothes the lilies of the fields, and yet Solomon 
in all his glory is not like to one of these." 

Rome was now the shadow of her former self. 
The light of her grandeur and loveliness had passed 
away. The latest and the noblest of her poets 
and historians had foretold in agony her approach- 
ing slavery and degradation. The ruins of the 
human mind, more awful and portentous than the 
desolation of the most solemn temples, threw a 
shade of gloom upon her golden palaces which the 
brutal vulgar could not see, but which the mighty 
felt with inward trepidation and despair. The ruins 
of Jerusalem lay defenceless and uninhabited upon 
the burning sands ; none visited, but in the depth 
of solemn awe, this accursed and solitary spot. 
Tradition says that there was seen to linger among 
the scorched and shattered fragments of the tem- 
ple, one being, whom he that saw dared not to call 



man, with clasped hands, immoveable eyes, and a 
visage horribly serene. Not on the will of the 
capricious multitude, nor the constant fluctuations 
of the many and the weak, depends the change of 
empires and religions. These are the mere insen- 
sible elements from which a subtler intelligence 
moulds its enduring statuary. They that direct the 
changes of this mortal scene breathe the decrees of 
their dominion from a throne of darkness and of 
tempest. The power of man is great. 

After many days of wandering, the Assassins 
pitched their tents in the valley of Bethzatanai. 
For ages had this fertile valley lain concealed from 
the adventurous search of man, among mountains 
of everlasting snow. The men of elder days had 
inhabited this spot. Piles of monumental marble 
and fragments of columns that in their integrity 
almost seemed the work of some intelligence more 
sportive and fantastic than the gross conceptions 
of mortality, lay in heaps beside the lake, and were 
visible beneath its transparent waves. The flower- 
ing orange-tree, the balsam, and innumerable odo- 
riferous shrubs, grew wild in the desolated portals. 
The fountain tanks had overflowed ; and, amid the 
luxuriant vegetation of their margin, the yellow 
snake held its unmolested dwelling. Hither came 
the tiger and the bear to contend for those once 
domestic animals who had forgotten the secure 
servitude of their ancestors. No sound, when the 
famished beast of prey had retreated in despair 
from the awful desolation of this place, at whose 
completion he had assisted, but the shrill cry of the 
stork, and the flapping of his heavy wings from the 
capital of the solitary column, and the scream of 
the hungry vulture baffled of its only victim. The 
lore of ancient wisdom was sculptured in mystic 
characters on the rocks. The human spirit and 
the human hand had been busy here to accomplish 
its profoundest miracles. It was a temple dedi- 
cated to the God of knowledge and of truth. The 
palaces of the Caliphs and the Caesars might easily 
surpass these ruins in magnitude and sumptuous- 
ness : but they were the design of tyrants and the 
work of slaves. Piercing genius and consummate 
prudence had planned and executed Bethzatanai. 
There was deep and important meaning in every 
lineament of its fantastic sculpture. The unintelli- 
gible legend, once so beautiful and perfect, so full 
of poetry and history, spoke, even in destruction, 
volumes of mysterious import, and obscure signifi- 
cance. 

But in the season of its utmost prosperity and 
magnificence, art might not aspire to vie with nature 
in the valley of Bethzatanai. All that was wonderful 
and lovely was collected in this deep seclusion. 
The fluctuating elements seemed to have been 



THE ASSASSINS. 



47 



rendered everlastingly permanent in forms of wonder 
and delight. The mountains of Lebanon had been 
divided to their base to form this happy valley ; on 
every side their icy summits darted their white 
pinnacles into the clear blue sky, imaging, in their 
grotesque outline, minarets, and ruined domes, 
and columns worn with time. Far below, the 
silver clouds rolled their bright volumes in many 
beautiful shapes, and fed the eternal springs that, 
spanning the dark chasms like a thousand radiant 
rainbows, leaped into the quiet vale, then, lingering 
in many a dark glade among the groves of cypress 
and of palm, lost themselves in the lake. The 
immensity of these precipitous mountains, with 
their starry pyramids of snow, excluded the sun, 
which overtopped not, even in its meridian, their 
overhanging rocks. But a more heavenly and 
serener light was reflected from their icy mirrors, 
which, piercing through the many-jtinted clouds, 
produced lights and colours of inexhaustible variety. 
The herbage was perpetually verdant, and clothed 
the darkest recesses of the caverns and the woods. 
Nature, undisturbed, had become an enchantress 
in these solitudes : she had collected here all that 
was wonderful and divine from the armoury of her 
omnipotence. The very winds breathed health 
and renovation, and the joyousness of youthful 
courage. Fountains of crystalline water played 
perpetually among the aromatic flowers, and 
mingled a freshness with their odour. The pine 
boughs became instruments of exquisite contrivance, 
among winch every varying breeze waked music 
of new and more delightful melody. Meteoric 
shapes, more effulgent than the moonlight, hung on 
the wandering clouds, and mixed in discordant 
dance around the spiral fountains. Blue vapours 
assumed strange lineaments under the rocks and 
among the ruins, lingering like ghosts with slow 
and solemn step. Through a dark chasm to the 
east, in the long perspective of a portal glittering 
with the unnumbered riches of the subterranean 
world, shone the broad moon, pouring in one yellow 
and unbroken stream her horizontal beams. Nearer 
the icy region, autumn and spring held an alternate 
reign. The sere leaves fell and choked the sluggish 
brooks ; the chilling fogs hung diamonds on every 
spray ; and in the dark cold evening the howling 
winds made melancholy music in the trees. Far 
above, shone the bright throne of winter, clear, 
cold, and dazzling. Sometimes there was seen the 
snow-flakes to fall before the sinking orb of the 
beamless sun, like a shower of fiery sulphur. The 
cataracts, arrested in their course, seemed, with 
their transparent columns, to support the dark- 
browed rocks. Sometimes the icy whirlwind 
ecooped the powdery snow aloft, to mingle with the 



hissing meteors, and scatter spangles through the 
rare and rayless atmosphere. 

Such strange scenes of chaotic confusion and 
harrowing sublimity, surrounding and shutting in 
the vale, added to the delights of its secure and 
voluptuous tranquillity. No spectator could have 
refused to believe that some spirit of great intelli- 
gence and power had hallowed these wild and beau- 
tiful solitudes to a deep and solemn mystery. 

The immediate effect of such a scene, suddenly 
presented to the contemplation of mortal eyes, is 
seldom the subject of authentic record. The 
coldest slave of custom cannot fail to recollect 
some few moments in which the breath of spring 
or the crowding clouds of sunset, with the pale 
moon shining through their fleecy skirts, or the 
song of some lonely bird perched on the only tree 
of an unfrequented heath, has awakened the touch 
of nature. And they were Arabians who entered 
the valley of Bethzatanai ; men who idolized nature 
and the God of nature ; to whom love and lofty 
thoughts, and the apprehensions of an uncorrupted 
spirit, were sustenance and life. Thus securely 
excluded from an abhorred world, all thought of its 
judgment was cancelled by the rapidity of their 
fervid imaginations. They ceased to acknowledge, 
or deigned not to advert to, the distinctions with 
which the majority of base and vulgar minds con- 
trol the longings and struggles of the soul towards 
its place of rest. A new and sacred fire was kindled 
in their hearts and sparkled in their eyes. Every 
gesture, every feature, the minutest action, was 
modelled to beneficence and beauty by the holy 
inspiration that had descended on their searching 
spirits. The epidemic transport communicated 
itself through every heart with the rapidity of a 
blast from heaven. They were already disembodied 
spirits ; they were already the inhabitants of 
paradise. To live, to breathe, to move, was itself 
a sensation of immeasurable transport. Every new 
contemplation of the condition of his nature brought 
to the happy enthusiast an added measure of delight, 
and impelled to every organ, where mind is united 
with external things, a keener and more exquisite 
perception of all that they contain of lovely and 
divine. To love, to be beloved, suddenly became 
an insatiable famine of his nature, which the wide 
circle of the universe, comprehending beings of 
such inexhaustible variety and stupendous magni- 
tude of excellence, appeared too narrow and confined 
to satiate. 

Alas, that these visitings of the spirit of life 
should fluctuate and pass away ! That the moments 
when the human mind is commensurate with all 
that it can conceive of excellent and powerful, 
should not endure with its existence and survive its 



i;i 



THE ASSASSINS. 



most momentous change ! But the beauty of a 
vernal sunset, with its overhanging curtains of em. 
purpled cloud, is rapidly dissolved, to return at 
some unexpected period, and spread an alleviating 
melancholy over the dark vigils of despair. 

It is true the enthusiasm of overwhelming trans- 
port which had inspired every breast among the i 
Assassins is no more. The necessity of daily occu- I 
pation and the ordinariness of that human life, j 
the burthen of which it is the destiny of every 
human being to bear, had smothered, not extin- 
guished, that divine and eternal fire. Not the less 
indelible and permanent were the impressions com- 
municated to all ; not the more unalterably were 
the features of their social character modelled and 
determined by its influence. 



CHAPTER II. 

Rome had fallen. Her senate-house had become 
a polluted den of thieves and liars ; her solemn 
temples, the arena of theological disputants, who 
made fire and sword the missionaries of their in- 
conceivable beliefs. The city of the monster Con- 
stantine, symbolizing, in the consequences of its 
foundation, the wickedness and weakness of his 
successors, feebly imaged with declining power the 
substantial eminence of the Roman name. Pilgrims 
of a new and mightier faith crowded to visit the 
lonely ruins of Jerusalem, and weep and pray 
before the sepulchre of the Eternal God. The 
earth was filled with discord, tumult, and ruin. 
The spirit of disinterested virtue had armed one- 
half of the civilised world against the other. Mon- 
strous and detestable creeds poisoned and blighted 
the domestic charities. There was no appeal to 
natural love, or ancient faith, from pride, super- 
stition, and revenge. 

Four centuries had passed thus, terribly charac- 
terised by the most calamitous revolutions. The 
Assassins, meanwhile, undisturbed by the surround- 
ing tumult, possessed and cultivated their fertile 
valley. The gradual operation of their peculiar con- 
dition had matured and perfected the singularity 
and excellence of their character. That cause, 
which had ceased to act as an immediate and over- 
powering excitement, became the unperceived law 
of their lives, and sustenance of their natures. 
Their religious tenets had also undergone a change, 
corresponding with the exalted condition of their 
moral being. The gratitude which they owed to the 
benignant Spirit by which their limited intelligences 
had not only been created but redeemed, was less 
frequently adverted to, became less the topic of 
comment or contemplation ; not, therefore, did it 



to be their presiding guardian, the guide of 
their inmost thoughts, the tribunal of appeal for 
the minutest particulars of their conduct. They 
learned to identify this mysterious benefactor with 
the delight that is bred among the solitary rocks, 
and has its dwelling alike in the changing colours 
of the clouds and the inmost recesses of the 
caverns. Their future also no longer existed, but 
in the blissful tranquillity of the present. Time 
was measured and created by the vices and the 
miseries of men, between whom and the happy 
nation of the Assassins, there was no analogy nor 
comparison. Already had their eternal peace com- 
menced. The darkness had passed away from the 
open gates of death. 

The practical results produced by then.' faith and 
condition upon their external conduct were singular 
and memorable. Excluded from the great and 
various community of mankind, these solitudes 
became to them a sacred hermitage, in which all 
formed, as it were, one being, divided against itself 
by no contending will or factious passions. Every 
impulse conspired to one end, and tended to a 
single object. Each devoted his powers to the 
happiness of the other. Their republic was the 
scene of the perpetual contentions of benevolence ; 
not the heartless and assumed kindness of commer- 
cial man, but the genuine virtue that has a legible 
superscription in every feature of the countenance, 
and every motion of the frame. The perverseness 
and calamities of those who dwelt beyond the 
mountains that encircled their undisturbed posses- 
sions, were unknown and unimagined. Little em- 
barrassed by the complexities of civilised society, 
they knew not to conceive any happiness that 
can be satiated without participation, or that 
thirsts not to reproduce and perpetually generate 
itself. The path of virtue and felicity was plain 
and unimpeded. They clearly acknowledged, in 
every case, that conduct to be entitled to pre- 
ference which would obviously produce the greatest 
pleasure. They could not conceive an instance 
in which it would be their duty to hesitate, in 
causing, at whatever expense, the greatest and 
most unmixed delight. 

Hence arose a peculiarity which only failed 
to germinate in uncommon and momentous conse- 
quences, because the Assassins had retired from 
the intercourse of mankind, over whom other 
motives and principles of conduct than justice and 
benevolence prevail. It would be a difficult matter 
for men of such a sincere and simple faith, to 
estimate the final results of their intentions, among 
the corrupt and slavish multitude. They would be 
perplexed also in their choice of the means, where- 
by their intentions might be fulfilled. To produce 



THE ASSASSINS. 



•19 



immediate pain or disorder for the sake of future 
benefit, is consonant, indeed, with the purest 
religion and philosophy, but never fails to excite 
invincible repugnance in the feelings of tho many. 
Against their predilections and distastes an Assas- 
sin, accidentally the inhabitant of a civilised com- 
munity, would wage unremitting hostility from 
principle. He would find himself compelled to 
adopt means which they would abhor, for the sake 
of an object which they could not conceive that he 
should propose to himself. Secure and self-enshrined 
in the magnificence and pre-eminence of his con- 
ceptions, spotless as the light of heaven, lie would 
be the victim among men of calumny and persecu- 
tion. Incapable of distinguishing his motives, they 
would rank him among the vilest and most atrocious 
criminals. Great, beyond all comparison with 
them, they would despise him in the presumption 
of their ignorance. Because his spirit burned with 
an unquenchable passion for their welfare, they 
would lead him, like his illustrious master, amidst 
scoffs, and mockery, and insult, to the remunera- 
tion of an ignominious death. 

Who hesitates to destroy a venomous serpent 
that has crept near his sleeping friend, except the 
man who selfishly dreads lest the malignant reptile 
should turn his fury on himself I And if the 
poisoner has assumed a human shape, if the bane 
be distinguished only from the viper's venom by 
the excess and extent of its devastation, will the 
saviour and avenger here retract and pause 
entrenched behind the superstition of the indefea- 
sible divinity of man % Is the human form, then, 
the mere badge of a prerogative for unlicensed 
wickedness and mischief ? Can the power derived 
from the weakness of the oppressed, or the igno- 
rance of the deceived, confer the right in security 
to tyrannise and defraud \ 

The subject of regular governments, and the 
disciple of established superstition, dares not to 
ask this question. For the sake of the eventual 
benefit, he endures what he esteems a transitory 
evil, and the moral degradation of man disquiets 
not his patience. But the religion of an Assassin 
imposes other virtues than endurance, when his 
fellow-men groan under tyranny, or have become 
so bestial and abject that they cannot feel their 
chains. An Assassin believes that man is emi- 
nently man, and only then enjoys the prerogatives 
of his privileged condition, when his affections and 
his judgment pay tribute to the God of Nature. 
The perverse, and vile, and vicious — what were 
they ? Shapes of some unholy vision, moulded by 
the spirit of Evil, which the sword of the merciful 
destroyer should sweep from this beautiful world. 
Dreamy nothings ; phantasms of misery and mis- 



chief, that hold their death-like state on glittering 
thrones, and in the loathsome dens of poverty. No 
Assassin would submissively temporize with vice, 
and in cold charity become a pander to falsehood 
and desolation. His path through the wilderness 
of civilised society would be marked with the blood 
of the oppressor and the ruiner. The wretch, 
whom nations tremblingly adore, would expiate in 
his throttling grasp a thousand licensed and vene- 
rable crimes. 

How many holy liars and parasites, in solemn 
guise, would his saviour arm drag from their luxu- 
rious couches, and plunge in the cold charnel, that 
the green and many-legged monsters of the slimy 
grave might eat off at their leisure the lineaments 
of rooted malignity and detested cunning. The 
respectable man — the smooth, smiling, polished 
villain, whom all the city honours ; whose very 
trade is lies and murder ; who buys his daily bread 
with the blood and tears of men, would feed the 
ravens with his limbs. The Assassin would cater 
nobly for the eyeless worms of earth, and the 
carrion fowls of heaven. 

Yet here, religion and human love had imbued 
the manners of those solitary people with inexpres- 
sible gentleness and benignity. Courage and active 
virtue, and the indignation against vice, which 
becomes a hurrying and irresistible passion, slept 
like the imprisoned earthquake, or the lightning 
shafts that hang in the golden clouds of evening. 
They were innocent, but they were capable of more 
than innocence ; for the great principles of their 
faith were perpetually acknowledged and adverted 
to ; nor had they forgotten, in this uninterrupted 
quiet, the author of their felicity. 

Four centuries had thus worn away without 
producing an event. Men had died, and natural 
tears had been shed upon their graves, in sorrow 
that improves the heart. Those who had been 
united by love had gone to death together, leaving 
to their friends the bequest of a most sacred grief, 
and of a sadness that is allied to pleasure. Babes 
that hung upon their mothers' breasts had become 
men ; men had died ; and many a wild luxuriant 
weed that overtopped the habitations of the vale, 
had twined its roots around their disregarded 
bones. Their tranquil state was like a summer sea, 
whose gentle undulations disturb not the reflected 
stars, and break not the long still line of the rain- 
bow hues of sunrise. 



CHAPTER III. 

Where all is thus calm, the slightest circum- 
stance is recorded and remembered. Before the 
sixth century had expired one incident occurred, 



50 



THE ASSASSINS. 



remarkable and strange, A young man, named 
Albedir, wandering in the woods, was startled by 
the screaming of a bird of prey, ami, looking up, 

saw Mood tall, drop by drop, from among the in- 
tertwined boughs of a cedar. Having climbed the 

tree, he beheld a terrible and dismaying spectacle. 
A naked human body was impaled on the broken 
branch. It was maimed and mangled horribly ; 
every limb bent and bruised into frightful distor- 
tion, and exhibiting a breathing image of the most 
sickening mockery of life. A monstrous snake had 
scented its prey from among the mountains— and 
above hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst 
this mass of desolated humanity, two eyes, black 
and inexpressibly brilliant, shone with an unearthly 
lustre. Beneath the blood-stained eye-brows their 
steady rays manifested the serenity of an immortal 
power, the collected energy of a deathless mind, 
spell-secured from dissolution. A bitter smile of 
mingled abhorrence and scorn distorted his wounded 
lip — he appeared calmly to observe and measure all 
around — self-possession had not deserted the shat- 
tered mass of life. 

The youth approached the bough on which the 
breathing corpse was hung. As he approached, 
the serpent reluctantly unwreathed his glittering 
coils, and crept towards his dark and loathsome 
cave. The vulture, impatient of his meal, fled to 
the mountain, that re-echoed with his hoarse screams. 
The cedar branches creaked with their agitating 
weight, faintly, aS the dismal wind arose. All else 
was deadly silent. 

At length a voice issued from the mangled man. 
It rattled in hoarse murmurs from his throat and 
lungs — his words were the conclusion of some 
strange mysterious soliloquy. They were broken, 
and without apparent connection, completing wide 
intervals of inexpressible conceptions. 

" The great tyrant is baffled, even in success. 
Joy 1 joy ! to his tortured foe ! Triumph to the 
worm whom he tramples under his feet ! Ha ! 
His suicidal hand might dare as well abolish the 
mighty frame of things ! Delight and exultation 
sit before the closed gates of death ! — I fear not 
to dwell beneath their black and ghastly shadow. 
Here thy power may not avail ! Thou createst — 
'tis mine to ruin and destroy. — I was thy slave — 
I am thy equal, and thy foe. — Thousands tremble 
before thy throne, who, at my voice, shall dare to 
pluck the golden crown from thine unholy head ! " 
He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed up his 
words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree — he dared 
not for dismay remove his eyes. He remained 
mute in the perturbation of deep and creeping 
horror. 

" Albedir !" said the same voice, ** Albedir ! in 



t 



the name of God, approach. He that suffered me 
to fall, watches thee ; — the gentle and merciful 
spirits of sweet human love, delight not in agony 
and horror. For pity's sake approach, in the name 
of thy good God, approach, Albedir ! " The tones 
were mild and clear as the responses of iEolian 
music. They floated to Albedir's ear like the 
warm bi*eath of June that lingers in the lawny 
groves, subduing all to softness. Tears of tender 
affection started into his eyes. It was as the voice 
of a "beloved friend. The partner of his childhood, 
the brother of his soul, seemed to call for aid, and 
pathetically to remonstrate with delay. He resisted 
not the magic impulse, but advanced towards the 
spot, and tenderly attempted to remove the wounded 
man. He cautiously descended the tree with his 
wretched burthen, and deposited it on the ground. 

A period of strange silence intervened. Awe 
and cold horror were slowly succeeding to the 
softer sensations of tumultuous pity, when again 
he heard the silver modulations of the same en- 
chanting voice. u Weep not for me, Albedir ! What 
wretch so utterly lost, but might inhale peace and 
renovation from this paradise ! I am wounded, 
and in pain ; but having found a refuge in this 
seclusion, and a friend in you, I am worthier of 
envy than compassion. Bear me to your cottage 
secretly : I would not disturb your gentle partner 
by my appearance. She must love me more dearly 
than a brother. I must be the playmate of your 
children ; already I regard them with a father's 
love. My arrival must not be regarded as a thing 
of mystery and wonder. What, indeed, but that 
men are prone to error and exaggeration, is less 
inexplicable, than that a stranger, wandering on 
Lebanon, fell from the rocks into the vale ? Albe* 
dir," he continued, and his deepening voice assumed 
awful solemnity, " in return for the affection with 
which I cherish thee and thine, thou owest this 
submission." 

Albedir implicitly submitted ; not even a thought 
had power to refuse its deference. He reassumed 
his burthen, and proceeded towards the cottage. 
He watched until Khaled should be absent, and 
conveyed the stranger into an apartment appro- 
priated for the reception of those who occasionally 
visited their habitation. He desired that the door 
should be securely fastened, and that he might not 
be visited until the morning of the following day. 

Albedir waited with impatience for the return 
of Khaled. The unaccustomed weight of even so 
transitory a secret, hung on his ingenuous and 
unpractised nature, like a blighting, clinging curse. 
The stranger's accents had lulled him to a trance 
of wild and delightful imagination. Hopes, so 
visionary and aerial, that they had assumed no 



THE ASSASSINS. 



51 



denomination, had spread themselves over his in- 
tellectual frame, and, phantoms as they were, had 
modelled his being to their shape. Still his mind 
was not exempt from the visitings of disquietude 
and perturbation. It was a troubled stream of 
thought, over whose fluctuating waves unsearchable 
fate seemed to preside, guiding its unforeseen alter- 
nations with an inexorable hand. Albedir paced 
earnestly the garden of his cottage, revolving every 
circumstance attendant on the incident of the day. 
He re-imaged with intense thought the minutest 
recollections of the scene. In vain — he was the 
slave of suggestions not to be controlled. As- 
tonishment, horror, and awe — tumultuous sym- 
pathy, and a mysterious elevation of soul, hurried 
away all activity of judgment, and overwhelmed, 
with stunning force, every attempt at deliberation 
or inquiry. 

His reveries were interrupted at length by the 
return of Khaled. She entered the cottage, that 
scene of undisturbed repose, in the confidence that 
change might as soon overwhelm the eternal world, 
as disturb this inviolable sanctuary. She started 
to behold Albedir. Without preface or remark, 
he recounted with eager haste the occurrences of 
the day. Khaled's tranquil spirit could hardly 
keep pace with the breathless rapidity of his 
narration. She was bewildered with staggering 
wonder even to hear his confused tones, and 
behold his agitated countenance. 



CHAPTER IV. 

On the following morning Albedir arose at sun- 
rise, and visited the stranger. He found him already 
risen, and employed in adorning the lattice of his 
chamber with flowers from the garden. There was 
something in his attitude and occupation singularly 
expressive of his entire familiarity with the scene. 
Albedir's habitation seemed to have been his ac- 
customed home. He addressed his host in a tone 
of gay and affectionate welcome, such as never fails 
to communicate by sympathy the feelings from 
which it flows. 

" My friend," said he, " the balm of the dew of 
our vale is sweet ; or is this garden the favoured 
spot where the winds conspire to scatter the best 
odours they can find ? Come, lend me your arm 
awhile, I feel very weak." He motioned to walk 
forth, but, as if unable to proceed, rested on the 
seat beside the door. For a few moments they 
were silent, if the interchange of cheerful and 
happy looks is to be called silence. At last he 
observed a spade that rested against the wall. 
" You have only one spade, brother," said he ; 
" you have only one, I suppose, of any of the 



instruments of tillage. Your garden ground, too, 
occupies a certain space which it will be necessary 
to enlarge. This must be quickly remedied. I 
cannot earn my supper of to-night, nor of to- 
morrow ; but thenceforward, I do not mean to eat 
the bread of idleness. I know that you would 
willingly perforin the additional labour which my 
nourishment would require ; I know, also, that you 
would feel a degree of pleasure in the fatigue arising 
from this employment, but I shall contest with you 
such pleasures as these, and such pleasures as these 
alone." His eyes were somewhat wan, and the 
tone of his voice languid as he spoke. 

As they were thus engaged, Khaled came to- 
wards them. The stranger beckoned to her to sit 
beside him, and taking her hands within his own, 
looked attentively on her mild countenance. Khaled 
inquired if he had been refreshed by sleep. He 
replied by a laugh of careless and inoffensive glee ; 
and placing one of her hands within Albedir's, 
said, " If this be sleep, here in this odorous vale, 
where these sweet smiles encompass us, and the 
voices of those who love are heard — if these be the 
visions of sleep, sister, those who he down in 
misery shall arise lighter than the butterflies. I 
came from amid the tumult of a world, how dif- 
ferent from this ! I am unexpectedly among you, 
in the midst of a scene such as my imagination 
never dared to promise. I must remain here — I 
must not depart." Khaled, recovering from the ad- 
miration and astonishment caused by the stranger's 
words and manner, assured him of the happiness 
which she should feel in such an addition to her 
society. Albedir, too, who had been more deeply 
impressed than Khaled by the event of his arrival, 
earnestly re-assured him of the ardour of the 
affection with which he had inspired them. The 
stranger smiled gently to hear the unaccustomed 
fervour of sincerity which animated their address, 
and was rising to retire, when Khaled said, " You 
have not yet seen our children, Maimuna and 
Abdallah. They are by the water-side, playing 
with their favourite snake. We have only to cross 
yonder little wood, and wind down a path cut in 
the rock that overhangs the lake, and we shall find 
them beside a recess winch the shore makes there, 
and which a chasm, as it were, among the rocks 
and woods, encloses. Do you think you could 
walk there ?" — " To see your children, Khaled ? 
I think I could, with the assistance of Albedir's 
arm, and yours." — So they went through the wood 
of ancient cypress, intermingled with the brightness 
of many-tinted blooms, which gleamed like stars 
through its romantic glens. They crossed the 
green meadow, and entered among the broken 

ehasms, beautiful as thev were in their investiture 
b2 



w 



ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 



of odoriferous shrubs, They oame at last, after 
pursuing • path which wound through the intri- 
cacies of a little wilderness, to the borders of the 
lake. They stood on the rock which overhung it, 
from which there was B prospect of all the miracles 
of nature and of art which encircled and adorned 
its shores. The stranger gazed upon it with a 
countenance unchanged by any emotion, but, as it 
were, thoughtfully and contemplatingly. As he 
gazed, Khaled ardently pressed his hand, and said, 
in a low yet eager voice, rt Look, look, lo there !" 
He turned towards her, but her eyes were not on 
him. She looked below — her lips were parted by 
the feelings which possessed her soul — her breath 
came and went regularly but inaudibly. She 
leaned over the precipice, and her dark hair 
hanging beside her face, gave relief to its fine 
lineaments, animated by such love as exceeds ut- 
terance. The stranger followed her eyes, and saw 
that her children were in the glen below ; then 
raising his eyes, exchanged with her affectionate 
looks of congratulation and delight. The boy was 
apparently eight years old, the girl about two years 
younger. The beauty of their form and counte- 
nance was something so divine and strange, as 
overwhelmed the senses of the beholder like a 
delightful dream, with insupportable ravishment. 
They were arrayed in a loose robe of linen, through 
which the exquisite proportions of their form 



appeared. Unconscious that they were observed, 
they did not relinquish the occupation in which 
they were engaged. They had constructed a little 
boat of the bark of trees, and had given it sails of 
interwoven feathers, and launched it on the water. 
They sate beside a white flat stone, on which a 
small snake lay coiled, and when their work was 
finished, they arose and called to the snake in 
melodious tones, so that it understood their lan- 
guage. For it unwreathed its shining circles and 
crept to the boat, into which no sooner had it 
entered, than the girl loosened the band which 
held it to the shore, and it sailed away. Then 
they ran round and round the little creek, clapping 
their hands, and melodiously pouring out wild 
sounds, which the snake seemed to answer by the 
restless glancing of his neck. At last a breath of 
wind came from the shore, and the boat changed 
its course, and was about to leave the creek, which 
the snake perceived and leaped into the water, and 
came to the little children's feet. The girl sang to 
it, and it leaped into her bosom, and she crossed 
her fair hands over it, as if to cherish it there. 
Then the boy answered with a song, and it glided 
from beneath her hands and crept towards him. 
While they were thus employed, Maimuna looked 
up, and seeing her parents on the cliff, ran to meet 
them up the steep path that wound around it ; and 
Abdallah, leaving his snake, followed joyfully. 



ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 



& ^fragment. 



The first law which it becomes a Reformer to 
propose and support, at the approach of a period 
of great political change, is the abolition of the 
punishment of death. 

It is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation, 
atonement, expiation, are rules and motives, so far 
from deserving a place in any enlightened system 
of political life, that they are the chief sources of a 
prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles 
of society. It is clear that however the spirit of 
legislation may appear to frame institutions upon 
more philosophical maxims, it has hitherto, in 
those cases which are termed criminal, done little 
more than palliate the spirit, by gratifying a por- 
tion of it ; and afforded a compromise between 
that which is best ; — the inflicting of no evil upon 
a sensitive being, without a decisively beneficial 
result in which he should at least participate ; — 



and that which is worst ; that he should be put to 
torture for the amusement of those whom he may 
have injured, or may seem to have injured. 

Omitting these remoter considerations, let us 
inquire what Death is ; that punishment which is 
applied as a measure of transgressions of indefinite 
shades of distinction, so soon as they shall have 
passed that degree and colour of enormity, with 
which it is supposed no inferior infliction is com- 
mensurate. 

And first, whether death is good or evil, a 
punishment or a reward, or whether it be wholly 
indifferent, no man can take upon himself to assert. 
That that within us which thinks and feels, con- 
tinues to think and feel after the dissolution of the 
body, has been the almost universal opinion of 
mankind, and the accurate philosophy of what 1 
may be permitted to term the modern Academy. 



ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 



58 



by showing the prodigious depth and extent of our 
ignorance respecting the causes and nature of sen- 
sation, renders probable the affirmative of a pro- 
position, the negative of which it is so difficult to 
conceive, and the popular arguments against which, 
derived from what is called the atomic system, are 
proved to be applicable only to the relation which 
one object bears to another, as apprehended by the 
mind, and not to existence itself, or the nature of 
that essence which is the medium and receptacle of 
objects. 

The popular system of religion suggests the idea 
that the mind, after death, will be painfully or 
pleasurably affected according to its determinations 
during life. However ridiculous and pernicious we 
must admit the vulgar accessories of this creed to 
be, there is a certain analogy, not wholly absurd, 
between the consequences resulting to an indi- 
vidual during life from the virtuous or vicious, 
prudent or imprudent, conduct of his external 
actions, to those consequences which are con- 
jectured to ensue from the discipline and order of 
his internal thoughts, as affecting his condition in a 
future state. They omit, indeed, to calculate upon 
the accidents of disease, and temperament, and 
organisation, and circumstance, together with the 
multitude of independent agencies which affect the 
opinions, the conduct, and the happiness of indi- 
viduals, and produce determinations of the will, 
and modify the judgment, so as to produce effects 
the most opposite in natures considerably similar. 
These are those operations in the order of the 
whole of nature, tending, we are prone to believe, 
to some definite mighty end, to which the agencies 
of our peculiar nature are subordinate ; nor is there 
any reason to suppose, that hi a future state they 
should become suddenly exempt from that subor- 
dination. The philosopher is unable to determine 
whether our existence in a previous state has 
affected our present condition, and abstains from 
deciding whether our present condition will affect 
us in that which may be future. That, if we 
continue to exist, the manner of our existence will 
be such as no inferences nor conjectures, afforded 
by a consideration of our earthly experience, can 
elucidate, is sufficiently obvious. The opinion that 
the vital principle within us, in whatever mode it 
may continue to exist, must lose that conscious- 
ness of definite and individual being which now 
characterises it, and become a unit in the vast sum 
of action and of thought which disposes and ani- 
mates the universe, and is called God, seems to 
belong to that class of opinion which has been 
designated as indifferent. 

To compel a person to know all that can be 
known by the dead, concerning that which the 



living fear, hope, or forget ; to plunge him into 
the pleasure or pain which there awaits him ; to 
punish or reward him in a manner and in a degree 
incalculable and incomprehensible by us ; to dis- 
robe hini at once from all that intertexture of 
good and evil with which Nature seems to have 
clothed every form of individual existence, is to 
inflict on him the doom of death. 

A certain degree of pain and terror usually 
accompany the infliction of death. This degree is 
infinitely varied by the infinite variety in the tem- 
perament and opinions of the sufferers. As a mea- 
sure of punishment, strictly so considered, and as 
an exhibition, which, by its known effects on the 
sensibility of the sufferer, is intended to intimidate 
the spectators from incurring a similar liability, it 
is singularly inadequate. 

Firstly, — Persons of energetic character, in 
whom, as in men who suffer for political crimes, 
there is a large mixture of enterprise, and forti- 
tude, and disinterestedness, and the elements, 
though misguided and disarranged, by which the 
strength and happiness of a nation might have 
been cemented, die in such a manner, as to make 
death appear not evil, but good. The death of 
what is called a traitor, that is, a person who, from 
whatever motive, would abolish the government of 
the day, is as often a triumphant exhibition of 
suffering virtue, as the warning of a culprit. The 
multitude, instead of departing with a panic-stricken 
approbation of the laws which exhibited such a 
spectacle, are inspired with pity, admiration and 
sympathy ; and the most generous among them 
feel an emulation to be the authors of such flat- 
tering emotions, as they experience stirring in 
their bosoms. Impressed by what they see and 
feel, they make no distinction between the motives 
which incited the criminals to the actions for which 
they suffer, or the heroic courage with which they 
turned into good that which their judges awarded 
to them as evil, or the purpose itself of those 
actions, though that purpose may happen to be 
eminently pernicious. The laws in this case lose 
that sympathy, which it ought to be their chief 
object to secure, and hi a participation of which 
consists their chief strength in maintaining those 
sanctions by which the parts of the social union 
are bound together, so as to produce, as nearly 
as possible, the ends for which it is instituted. 

Secondly, — Persons of energetic character, in 
communities not modelled with philosophical skill 
to turn all the energies which they contain to the 
purposes of common good, are prone also to fall 
into the temptation of undertaking, and are pecu- 
liarly fitted for despising the perils attendant upon 
consummating, the most enormous crimes. Murder, 



M 



ON THE I'lMSUMENT OF DEATH. 



rapes, extensive Bchemes of plunder, are the 
actions of longing to this class ; and 

death is the penalty of conviction. Bat the coarse- 
ness o\' organisation, peculiar to men capable of 

committing acts wholly selfish, is usually found to 

be associated with a proportionate insensibility 
to tear or pain. Their Bufferings communicate to 
those of the spectators, who may be liable to the 
commission ot' similar crimes, a sense of the light- 
I that event, when closely examined, which, 
at a distance, as uneducated persons are accus- 
tomed to do, probably they regarded with horror. 
But a great majority of the spectators are so 
bound up in the interests and the habits of social 
union that no temptation would be sufficiently 
strong to induce them to a commission of the 
enormities to which tins penalty is assigned. The 
more powerful, and the richer among them, — and a 
numerous class of little tradesmen are richer and 
more powerful than those who are employed by 
them, and the employer, in general, bears this 
relation to the employed, — regard their owtl 
wrongs as, in some degree, avenged, and their own 
rights secured by this punishment, inflicted as the 
penalty of whatever crime. In cases of murder or 
mutilation, this feeling is almost universal. In 
those, therefore, whom this exhibition does not 
awaken to the sympathy which extenuates crime 
and discredits the law which restrains it, it pro- 
duces feelings more directly at war with the 
genuine purposes of political society. It excites 
those emotions which it is the chief object of civili- 
sation to extinguish for ever, and in the extinction 
of which alone there can be any hope of better 
institutions than those under which men now mis- 
govern one another. Men feel that their revenge 
is gratified, and that their security is established 
by the extinction and the sufferings of beings, in 
most respects resembling themselves ; and their 
daily occupations constraining them to a precise 
form in all their thoughts, thej' come to connect 
inseparably the idea of their own advantage 
with that of the death and torture of others. It 
is manifest that the object of sane polity is 
directly the reverse ; and that laws founded upon 
reason, should accustom the gross vulgar to asso- 
ciate their ideas of security and of interest with 
the reformation, and the strict restraint, for that 
purpose alone, of those who might invade it. 

The passion of revenge is originally nothing 
more than an habitual perception of the ideas of 
the sufferings of the person who inflicts an injury, 
as connected, as they are in a savage state, or in 
such portions of society as are yet undisciplined 
to civilisation, with security that that injury will 
not be repeated in future. This feeling, engrafted 



upon superstition mid confirmed by habit, at last 
loses sight of the only object for which it may be 
supposed to have been implanted, and becomes a 
passion and a duty to be pursued and fulfilled, 
even to the destruction of those ends to which it 
originally tended. The other passions, both good 
and evil, Avarice, Remorse, Love, Patriotism, 
present a similar appearance ; and to this principle 
of the mind over-shooting the mark at which it 
aims, we owe all that is eminently base or excel- 
lent in human nature ; in providing for the nutri- 
ment or the extinction of which, consists the true 
art of the legislator.* 

Nothing is more clear than that the infliction of 
punishment in general, in a degree which the refor- 
mation and the restraint of those who transgress 
the laws does not render indispensable, and none 
more than death, confirms all the inhuman and 
unsocial impulses of men. It is almost a prover- 
bial remark, that those nations in which the penal 
code has been particularly mild, have been dis- 
tinguished from all others by the rarity of crime. 
But the example is to be admitted to be equivocal. 
A more decisive argument is afforded by a consi- 
deration of the universal connection of ferocity of 
manners, and a contempt of social ties, with the 
contempt of human life. Governments which 
derive their institutions from the existence of cir- 
cumstances of barbarism and violence, with some 
rare exceptions perhaps, are bloody in proportion 
as they are despotic, and form the manners of 
their subjects to a sympathy with their own spirit. 

The spectators who feel no abhorrence at a 
public execution, but rather a self-applauding 
superiority, and a sense of gratified indignation, are 
surely excited to the most inauspicious emotions. 
The first reflection of such a one is the sense of his 
own internal and actual worth, as preferable to 
that of the victim, whom circumstances have led 
to destruction. The meanest wretch is impressed 
with a sense of his own comparative merit. He is 



* The savage and the illiterate are hut faintly aware of 
the distinction hetween the future and the past ; they 
mate actions belonging to periods so distinct, the subjects 
of similar feelings ; they live only in the present, or in the 
p.ast, as it is present. It is in this that the philosopher 
excels one of the many ; it is this which distinguishes the 
doctrine of philosophic necessity from fatalism ; and that 
determination of the will, by which it is the active source 
of future events, from that liberty or indifference, to 
which the abstract liability of irremediable actions is 
attached, according to the notions of the vulgar. 

This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse 
and Revenge ; the one extending itself over the future, and 
the other over the past ; provinces in which their sug- 
gestions can only be the sources of evil. The purpose of a 
resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in future, 
and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an 
enemy, are the sources from which the enormous super- 
stitions implied in the words cited have arisen. 



ON LIFE. 



55 



one of those on whom the tower of Siloam fell not — 
he is such a one as Jesus Christ found not in all 
Samaria, who, in his own soul, throws the first 
stone at the woman taken in adultery. The 
popular religion of the country takes its designa- 



tion from that illustrious person whose beautiful 
sentiment I have quoted. Any one who has stript 
from the doctrines of this person the veil of fami- 
liarity, will perceive how adverse their spirit is to 
feelings of this nature. 



ON LIFE. 



Life and the world, or whatever we call that 
which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. 
The mist of familiarity obscures from us the 
wonder of our being. We are struck with admi- 
ration at some of its transient modifications, but it 
is itself the great miracle. What are changes 
of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opi- 
nions which supported them ; what is the birth and 
the extinction of religious and of political systems 
to life ? What are the revolutions of the globe 
which we inhabit, and the operations of the ele- 
ments of which it is composed, compared with life ? 
What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which 
this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and 
their destiny, compared with life ? Life, the great 
miracle, we admire not, because it is so mira- 
culous. It is well that we are thus shielded by 
the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so 
unfathomable, from an astonishment which would 
otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that 
which is its object. 

If any artist, I do not say had executed, but 
had merely conceived in his mind the system of 
the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not 
existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon 
canvas, the spectacle now afforded by the nightly 
cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the wisdom of 
astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or 
had he imagined the scenery of this earth, the 
mountains, the seas, and the rivers ; the grass, and 
the flowers, and the variety of the forms and 
masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colours 
which attend the setting and the rising sun, and 
the hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these 
things not before existing, truly we should have 
been astonished, and it would not have been a vain 
boast to have said of such a man, " Non merita 
nome di creatore, sennon Iddio ed il Poeta." But 
now these things are looked on with little wonder, 
and to be conscious of them with intense delight 
is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a 
refined and extraordinary person. The multitude 
of men care not for them. It is thus with Life — 
that which includes all. 



What is life ? Thoughts and feelings arise, with 
or without our will, and we employ words to 
express them. We are born, and our birth is 
unremembered, and our infancy remembered but 
in fragments ; we live on, and in living we lose the 
apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that 
words can penetrate the mystery of our being ! 
Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance 
to ourselves, and tins is much. For what are we ? 
Whence do we come ? and whither do we go ? Is 
birth the commencement, is death the conclusion 
of our being ? What is birth and death ? 

The most refined abstractions of logic conduct 
to a view of life, which, though startling to the 
apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual 
sense of its repeated combinations lias extinguished 
in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain 
from this scene of things. I confess that I am one 
of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the 
conclusions of those philosophers who assert that 
nothing exists but as it is perceived. 

It is a decision against which all our persuasions 
struggle, and we must be long convicted before we 
can be convinced that the solid universe of external 
things is " such stuff as dreams are made of." The 
shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of 
mind and matter, its fatal consequences in morals, 
and their violent dogmatism concerning the source 
of all things, had early conducted me to mate- 
rialism. This materialism is a seducing system 
to young and superficial minds. It allows its dis- 
ciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking. 
But I was discontented with such a view of things 
as it afforded ; man is a being of high aspirations, 
" looking both before and after," whose u thoughts 
wander through eternity," disclaiming alliance with 
transience and decay ; incapable of imagining to 
himself annihilation ; existing but in the future 
and the past ; being, not what he is, but what he 
has been and shall be. Whatever may be his true 
and final destination, there is a spirit within him 
at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This 
is the character of all life and being. Each is at 
once the centre and the circumference ; the point 



:><; 



ON LIFE. 



to which all things are referred, and the line in 
which all rhinos are contained. Sach oontem- 

plationa as these, materialism ami the popular phi- 
losophy of mind ami matter alike forbid ; they are 
only Consistent with the intellectual system. 

It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation 

of arguments sutlieiently familiar to those in- 
quiring minds, whom alone a writer on abstruse 
subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps 
the most clear and vigorous statement of the intel- 
lectual system is to be found in Sir William 
Drummond's Academical Questions. After such 
an exposition, it would be idle to translate into 
other words what could only lose its energy and 
titness by the change. Examined point by point, 
and word by word, the most discriminating in- 
tellects have been able to discern no train of 
thoughts in the process of reasoning, which does 
not conduct inevitably to the conclusion which has 
been stated. 

What follows from the admission ? It esta- 
blishes no new truth, it gives us no additional in- 
sight into our hidden nature, neither its action nor 
itself. Philosophy, impatient as it may be to 
build, has much work yet remaining, as pioneer for 
the overgrowth of ages. It makes one step to- 
wards this object ; it destroys error, and the roots 
of error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of 
the reformer in political and ethieal questions to 
leave, a vacancy. It reduces the mind to that 
freedom in which it would have acted, but for the 
misuse of words and signs, the instruments of its 
own creation. By signs, I would be understood in 
a wide sense, including what is properly meant by 
that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this 
latter sense, almost all familiar objects are signs 
standing, not for themselves, but for others, in 
their capacity of suggesting one thought which shall 
lead to a train of thoughts. Our whole life is thus 
an education of error. 

Let us recollect our sensations as children. 
What a distinct and intense apprehension had we 
of the world and of ourselves ! Many of the cir- 
cumstances of social life were then important to us 
which are now no longer so. But that is not the 
point of comparison on which I mean to insist. 
We less habitually distinguished all that we saw 
and felt, from ourselves. They seemed as it were 
to constitute one mass. There are some persons 
who, in this respect, are always children. Those 
who are subject to the state called reverie, feel as 
if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding 
universe, or as if the surrounding universe were 
absorbed into their being. They are conscious of 
no distinction. And these are states which pre- 
cede, or accompany, or follow an unusually intense 



ami vivid apprehension of life. As men grow up 
this power commonly decays, and they become 
mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings 
and then reasonings are the combined result of a 
multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of 
what are called impressions, planted by reiteration. 

The view of life presented by the most refined 
deductions of the intellectual philosophy, is that of 
unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived. The 
difference is merely nominal between those two 
classes of thought, which are vulgarly distin- 
guished by the names of ideas and of external 
objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, 
the existence of distinct individual minds, similar 
to that which is employed in now questioning its 
own nature, is likewise found to be a delusion. 
The words /, you, they, are not signs of any actual 
difference subsisting between the assemblage of 
thoughts thus indicated, but are merely marks 
employed to denote the different modifications of 
the one mind. 

Let it not be supposed that this doctrine con- 
ducts to the monstrous presumption that I, the 
person who now write and think, am that one 
mind. I am but a portion of it. The words I 
and you, and they are grammatical devices invented 
simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the 
intense and exclusive sense usually attached to 
them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to 
express so subtle a conception as that to which the 
Intellectual Philosophy has conducted us. We 
are on that verge where words abandon us, and 
what wonder if we grow 7 dizzy to look dowTi the 
dark abyss of how little we know. 

The relations of things remain unchanged, by 
whatever system. By the word things is to be un- 
derstood any object of thought, that is any thought 
upon which any other thought is employed, with 
an apprehension of distinction. The relations of 
these remain unchanged ; and such is the material 
of our knowledge. 

What is the cause of life ? that is, how was it 
produced, or what agencies distinct from life have 
acted or act upon fife ? All recorded generations 
of mankind ha\e wearily busied themselves in 
inventing answers to this question ; and the result 
has been, — Religion. Yet, that the basis of all 
things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges, 
mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we 
have any experience of its properties, and beyond 
that experience how vain is argument ! cannot 
create, it can only perceive. It is said also to be 
the cause. But cause is only a w 7 ord expressing a 
certain state of the human mind with regard to the 
manner in winch two thoughts are apprehended to 
be related to each other. If anv one desires to 



ON A FUTURE STATE. 



5? 



know how unsatisfactorily the popular philosophy 
employs itself upon this great question, they need 
ouly impartially reflect upon the manner in which 



thoughts develop themselves m their minds. It is 
infinitely improbable that the euu.se of mind, that 
is, of existence, is similar to mind. 



ON A FUTURE STATE. 



It has been the persuasion of an immense 
majority of human beings in all ages and nations 
that we continue to live after death, — that apparent 
termination of all the functions of sensitive and 
intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been 
contented with supposing that species of existence 
which some philosophers have asserted ; namely, 
the resolution of the component parts of the 
mechanism of a living being into its elements, and 
the impossibility of the minutest particle of these 
sustaining the smallest diminution. They have 
clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, 
which they have distinguished from the objects 
of it, under the several names of spirit and matter, 
is, in its own nature, less susceptible of division 
and decay, and that, when the body is resolved 
into its elements, the principle which animated it 
will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philo- 
sophers — and those to whom we are indebted for 
the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, 
suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence is the 
mere result of certain combinations among the 
particles of its objects ; and those among them 
who believe that we live after death, recur to the 
interposition of a supernatural power, which shall 
overcome the tendency inherent in all material 
combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into 
other forms. 

Let us trace the reasonings which in one and 
the other have conducted to these two opinions, 
and endeavour to discover what we ought to think 
on a question of such momentous interest. Let 
us analyse the ideas and feelings which constitute 
the contending beliefs, and watchfully establish a 
discrimination between words and thoughts. Let 
us bring the question to the test of experience and 
fact ; and ask ourselves, considering our nature 
in its entire extent, what light we derive from a 
sustained and comprehensive view of its compo- 
nent parts, which may enable us to assert, with 
certainty, that we do or do not live after death. 

The examination of this subject requires that 
it should be stript of all those accessory topics 
which adhere to it in the common opinion of men. 
The existence of a God, and a future state of re- 
wards and punishments, are totally foreign to the 



subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled 
by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can 
be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a 
future state. It has been asserted, mdeed, that as 
goodness and justice are to be numbered among 
the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly 
compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, 
and that he will make every sensitive being, who 
does not deserve punishment, happy for ever. But 
this view of the subject, which it would be tedious 
as well as superfluous to develop and expose, 
satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we 
now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, 
on the other hand, that the mysterious principle 
which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is 
neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an 
inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the 
animating power survives the body which it has 
animated, by laws as independent of any super- 
natural agent as those through which it first be- 
came united with it. Nor, if a future state be 
clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state 
of punishment or reward. 

By the word death, we express that condition 
in which natures resembling ourselves apparently 
cease to be that winch they were. We no longer 
hear them, speak, nor see them move. If they 
have sensations and apprehensions, we no longer 
participate in them. We know no more than that 
those external organs, and all that fine texture of 
material frame, without which we have no expe- 
rience that life or thought can subsist, are dissolved 
and scattered abroad. The body is placed under 
the earth, and after a certain period there remains 
no vestige even of its form. This is that contem- ! 
plation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow j 
eclipses the brightness of the world. The common 
observer is struck with dejection at the spectacle. 
He contends in vain against the persuasion of the 
grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The 
corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. 
Those who have preceded him, and whose voice 
was delightful to his ear ; whose touch met his 
like sweet and subtle fire ; whose aspect spread 
a visionary light upon his path-^these he cannot 
meet again The organ's of souse are destroyed. 



;>8 



ON A FUTURE STATE. 



and the intellectual operations dependent on them 
have perished with their sources. How cau a 
oorpse see or feel I its eyes ire eaten out, and its 

heart IS black and without motion. What inter- 
course can two heaps of putrid clay and crumbling 
bones hold together I When you can discover 
where the fresh colours of the faded flower abide, 
or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among 
the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful con- 
templations of the common observer, though the 
popular religion often prevents him from confessing 
them even to himself. 

The natural philosopher, in addition to the 
sensations common to all men inspired by the 
event of death, believes that he sees with more 
certainty that it is attended with the annihilation 
of sentiment and thought. He observes the mental 
powers increase and fade with those of the body, 
and even accommodate themselves to the most 
transitory changes of our physical nature. Sleep 
suspends many of the faculties of the vital and 
intellectual principle ; drunkenness and disease will 
either temporarily or permanently derange them. 
Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most 
excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age 
the mind gradually withers ; and as it grew and 
was strengthened with the body, so does it together 
with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly 
these are convincing evidences that so soon as the 
organs of the body are subjected to the laws of 
inanimate matter, sensation, and perception, and 
apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that 
what we call thought is not an actual being, but no 
more than the relation between certain parts of 
that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the 
universe is composed, and which ceases to exist 
so soon as those parts change their position with 
regard to each other. Thus colour, and sound, 
and taste, and odour exist only relatively. But 
let thought be considered as some peculiar sub- 
stance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the 
animation of living beings. Why should that sub- 
stance be assumed to be something essentially dis- 
tinct from all others, and exempt from subjection 
to those laws from which no other substance is 
exempt ? It differs, indeed, from all other sub- 
stances, as electricity, and light, and magnetism, 
and the constituent parts of air and earth, severally 
differ from all others. Each of these is subject to 
change and to decay, and to conversion into other 
forms. Yet the difference between light and earth 
is scarcely greater than that which exists between 
life, or thought, and fire. The difference between 
the two former was never alleged as an argument 
for the eternal permanence of either, in that form 
under which they first might offer themselves to 



our notice. Why should the difference between 
the two latter substances be an argument for the 
prolongation of the existence of one and not 
the other, when the existence of both has arrived 
at their apparent termination ? To say that fire 
exists without manifesting any of the properties of 
fire, such as light, heat, &c, or that the principle 
of life exists without consciousness, or memory, or 
desire, or motive, is to resign, by an awkward dis- 
tortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute. 
To say that the principle of life may exist in dis- 
tribution among various forms, is to assert what 
cannot be proved to be either true or false, but 
which, were it true, annihilates all hope of exist- 
ence after death, in any sense in which that event 
can belong to the hopes and fears of men. Sup- 
pose, however, that the intellectual and vital 
principle differs in the most marked and essential 
manner from all other known substances ; that 
they have all some resemblance between them- 
selves which it in no degree participates. In what 
manner can this concession be made an argument 
for its imperishability ? All that we see or know 
perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ 
indeed from everything else. But that it survives 
that period, beyond which we have no experience 
of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity 
affords no shadow of proof, and nothing but our 
own desires could have led us to conjecture or 
imagina 

Have we existed before birth ? It is difficult to 
conceive the possibility of this. There is, in the 
generative principle of each animal and plant, a 
power which converts the substances by which it 
is surrounded into a substance homogeneous with 
itself. That is, the relations between certain 
elementary particles of matter undergo a changet 
and submit to new combinations. For when we 
use the words principle, power, cause, &c, we mean 
to express no real being, but only to class under 
those terms a certain series of co-existing pheno- 
mena ; but let it be supposed that this principle is 
a certain substance which escapes the observation 
of the chemist and anatomist. It certainly may 
he; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical to 
allege the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its 
truth. Does it see, hear, feel, before its combina- 
tion with those organs on which sensation depends ? 
Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those 
ideas which sensation alone can communicate ? If 
we have not existed before birth ; if, at the period 
when the parts of our nature on which thought 
and life depend, seem to be woven together, they 
are woven together ; if there are no reasons to 
suppose that we have existed before that period 
at which our existence apparently commences, 



SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 



59 



then there are no grounds for supposition that we 
shall continue to exist after our existence has 
apparently ceased. So far as thought and life is 
concerned, the same will take place with regard to 
us, individually considered, after death, as had 
place before our birth. 

It is said that it is possible that we should con- 
tinue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable 
to us at present. This is a most unreasonable pre- 
sumption. It casts on the adherents of annihila- 
tion the burthen of proving the negative of a ques- 
tion, the affirmative of which is not supported by a 
single argument, and which, by its very nature, lies 
beyond the experience of the human understand- 
ing. It is sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any 
proposition, concerning which we are ignorant, 



just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in 
itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of 
whatever enters into the wildest imagination to 
conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated. But it 
is enough that such assertions should be either 
contradictory to the known laws of nature, or 
exceed the limits of our experience, that their 
fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should 
be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only 
those who desire to be persuaded. 

This desire to be for ever as we are ; the reluct- 
ance to a violent and unexperienced change, which 
is common to all the animated and inanimate com- 
binations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret 
persuasion which has given birth to the opinions 
of a future state. 



SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 



I. THE MIND. 

I. It is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we 
can think of nothing which we have not perceived. 
When I say that we can think of nothing, I mean, 
we can imagine nothing, we can reason of nothing, 
we can remember nothing, we can foresee nothing. 
The most astonishing combinations of poetry, the 
subtlest deductions of logic and mathematics, are 
no other than combinations which the intellect 
makes of sensations according to its own laws. A 
catalogue of all the thoughts of the mind, and of 
all their possible modifications, is a cyclopedic 
history of the universe. 

But, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the 
various planets of this and other solar systems ; 
and the existence of a Power bearing the same 
relation to all that we perceive and are, as what we 
call a cause does to what we call effect, were never 
subjects of sensation, and yet the laws of mind 
almost universally suggest, according to the various 
disposition of each, a conjecture, a persuasion, or a 
conviction of their existence. The reply is simple ; 
these thoughts are also to be included in the cata- 
logue of existence ; they are modes in which 
thoughts are combined ; the objection only adds 
force to the conclusion, that beyond the limits of 
perception and thought nothing can exist. 

Thoughts, or ideas, or notions, call them what 
you will, differ from each other, not in kind, but 
in force. It has commonly been supposed that 
those distinct thoughts which affect a number of 
persons, at regular intervals, during the passage 
of a multitude of other thoughts, which are called 



real, or external objects, are totally different in kind 
from those which affect only a few persons, and 
which recur at irregular intervals, and are usually 
more obscure and indistinct, such as hallucinations, 
dreams, and the ideas of madness. No essential 
distinction between any one of these ideas, or any 
class of them, is founded on a correct observation 
of the nature of things, but merely on a considera- 
tion of what thoughts are most invariably sub- 
servient to the security and happiness of life ; and 
if nothing more were expressed by the distinction, 
the philosopher might safely accommodate his 
language to that of the vulgar. But they pretend 
to assert an essential difference, which has no 
foundation in truth, and which suggests a narrow 
and false conception of universal nature, the parent 
of the most fatal errors in speculation. A specific 
difference between every thought of the mind, is, 
indeed, a necessary consequence of that law by 
which it perceives diversity and number ; but a 
generic and essential difference is wholly arbitrary. 
The principle of the agreement and similarity of 
all thoughts, is, that they are all thoughts ; the 
principle of their disagreement consists in the 
variety and irregularity of the occasions on which 
they arise in the mind. That in which they 
agree, to that in which they differ, is as everything 
to nothing. Important distinctions, of various 
degrees of force, indeed, are to be established 
between them, if they were, as they may be, sub- 
jects of ethical and oeconomical discussion ; but 
that is a question altogether distinct. 

By considering all knowledge as bounded by 



SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 



perception, whose operations may be indefinitely 

combined, we arrive at a conception of Nature in- 
- My more magnificent, simple and true, than 
accords with the ordinary systems of complicated 
and partial consideration. Nor does a contem- 
plation of the universe, in this comprehensive and 
synthetical view, exclude the subtlest analysis of 
its modifications and parts. 



A scale might be formed, graduated according 
to the degrees of a combined ratio of intensity, 
duration, connection, periods of recurrence, and 
utility, which would be the standard, according 
to which all ideas might be measured, and an 
uninterrupted chain of nicely shadowed distinctions 
would be observed, from the faintest impression on 
the senses, to the most distinct combination of 
those impressions ; from the simplest of those 
combinations, to that mass of knowledge which, 
including our own nature, constitutes what we call 
the universe. 



We are intuitively conscious of our own ex- 
istence, and of that connection in the train of our 
successive ideas, which we term our identity. We 
are conscious also of the existence of other minds ; 
but not intuitively. Our evidence, with respect to 
the existence of other minds, is founded upon a 
very complicated relation of ideas, which it is 
foreign to the purpose of this treatise to anatomise. 
The basis of this relation is, undoubtedly, a peri- 
odical recurrence of masses of ideas, which our 
voluntary determinations have, in one peculiar 
direction, no power to circumscribe or to arrest, 
and against the recurrence of which they can only 
imperfectly provide. The irresistible laws of 
thought constrain us to believe that the precise 
limits of our actual ideas are not the actual limits 
of possible ideas ; the law, according to which 
these deductions are drawn, is called analogy ; and 
this is the foundation of all our inferences, from 
one idea to another, inasmuch as they resemble 
each other. 



We see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our 
own shape, and in shapes more or less analogous 
to our own. These are perpetually changing the 
mode of their existence relatively to us. To ex- 
press the varieties of these modes, we say, we move, 
they move ; and as this motion is continual, though 
not uniform, we express our conception of the 
diversities of its course by — it has been, it is, it shall 
be. These diversities are events or objects, and 
are essential, considered relatively to human 
identity, for the existence of the human mind. 
For if the inequalities, produced by what has been 



termed the operations of the external universe 
were levelled by the perception of our being, 
uniting, and filling up their interstices, motion and 
mensuration, and time, and space ; the elements of 
the human mind being thus abstracted, sensation 
and imagination cease. Mind cannot be considered 
pure. 

II. — WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE. ERRORS IN THE USUAL 
METHODS OF CONSIDERING THEM. 

We do not attend sufficiently to what passes 
within ourselves. We combine words, combined a 
thousand times before. In our minds we assume 
entire opinions ; and in the expression of those 
opinions, entire phrases, when we would philoso- 
phise. Our whole style of expression and senti- 
ment is infected with the tritest plagiarisms. Our 
words are dead, our thoughts are cold and bor- 
rowed. 

Let us contemplate facts ; let us, in the great 
study of ourselves, resolutely compel the mind to a 
rigid consideration of itself. We are not content 
with conjecture, and inductions, and syllogisms, in 
sciences regarding external objects. As in these, 
let us also, in considering the phenomena of mind, 
severely collect those facts which cannot be dis- 
puted. Metaphysics will thus possess this conspi- 
cuous advantage over every other science, that 
each student, by attentively referring to his own 
mind, may ascertain the authorities upon which 
any assertions regarding it are supported. There 
can thus be no deception, we ourselves being the 
depositaries of the evidence of the subject which we 
consider. 

Metaphysics may be defined as an inquiry con- 
cerning those things belonging to, or connected 
■with, the internal nature of man. 

It is said that mind produces motion ; and it 
might as well have been said, that motion pro- 
duces mind. 

III. DIFFICULTY OF ANALYZING THE HCMAN MIND. 

If it were possible that a person should give a 
faithful history of his being, from the earliest 
epochs of his recollection, a picture would be pre- 
sented such as the world has never contemplated 
before. A mirror would be held up to all men in 
which they might behold their own recollections, 
and, in dim perspective, their shadowy hopes and 
fears, — all that they dare not, or that daring and 
desiring, they could not expose to the open eyes 
of day. But thought can with difficulty visit the 
intricate and •winding chambers which it inhabits. 
It is like a river whose rapid and perpetual stream 
flows outwards ; — like one in dread who speeds 
through the recesses of some haunted pile, and 



SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 



0] 



dares not look behind. The caverns of the mind 
are obscure, and shadowy ; or pervaded with a 
lustre, beautifully bright indeed, but shining not 
beyond their portals. If it were possible to be 
where we have been, vitally and indeed — if, at the 
moment of our presence there, we could define the 
results of our experience, — if the passage from sen- 
sation to reflection — from a state of passive per- 
ception to voluntary contemplation, were not so 
dizzying and so tumultuous, this attempt would be 
less difficult. 



IV. — HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON. 

Most of the errors of philosophers have arisen 
from considering the human being in a point of 
view too detailed and circumscribed. He is not a 
moral, and an intellectual, — but also, and pre-emi- 
nently, an imaginative being. His own mind is 
his law ; his own mind is all things to him. If we 
would arrive at any knowledge which should be 
serviceable from the practical conclusions to which 
it leads, we ought to consider the mind of man 
and the universe as the great whole on which to 
exercise our speculations. Here, above all, verbal 
disputes ought to be laid aside, though this has 
long been their chosen field of battle. It imports 
little to inquire whether thought be distinct from 
the objects of thought. The use of the words 
external and internal, as applied to the establish- 
ment of this distinction, has been the symbol and 
the source of much dispute. This is merely an 
affair of words, and as the dispute deserves, to say, 
that when speaking of the objects of thought, we 
indeed only describe one of the forms of thought — 
or that, speaking of thought, we only apprehend 
one of the operations of the universal system of 
beings. 



V. — CATALOGUE OF THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS, AS 
CONNECTING SLEEPING AND WAKING. 

1. Let us reflect on our infancy, and give as 
faithfully as possible a relation of the events of 
sleep. 

And first I am bound to present a faithful pic- 
ture of my own peculiar nature relatively to s^eep. 
I do not doubt that were every individual to 
imitate me, it would be found that among many 
circumstances peculiar to their individual nature, a 
sufficiently general resemblance would be found to 
prove the connection existing between those pecu- 
liarities and the most universal phenomena. I 
shall employ caution, indeed, as to the facts which 
I state, that they contain nothing false or ex- 
aggerated. But they contain no more than certain 
elucidations of my own nature ; concerning the 
degree hi which it resembles, or differs from, 



that of others, I am by no means accurately aware. 
It is sufficient, however, to caution the reader 
against drawing general inferences from particular 
instances. 

I omit the general instances of delusion in fever 
or delirium, as well as mere dreams considered in 
themselves. A delineation of this subject, however 
inexhaustible and interesting, is to be passed over. 

What is the connection of sleeping and of 
waking % 



2. I distinctly remember dreaming three several 
times, between intervals of two or more years, the 
same precise dream. It was not so much what 
is ordinarily called a dream ; the single image, 
unconnected with all other images, of a youth who 
was educated at the same school with myself, pre- 
sented itself in sleep. Even now, after the lapse 
of many years, I can never hear the name of this 
youth, without the three places where I dreamed 
of him presenting themselves distinctly to my 
mind. 



3. In dreams, images acquire associations pe- 
culiar to dreaming ; so that the idea of a particular 
house, when it recurs a second time in dreams, will 
have relation with the idea of the same house, in 
the first time, of a nature entirely different from 
that which the house excites, when seen or thought 
of in relation to waking ideas. 



4. I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and 
unaccountable connection of which with the ob- 
scure parts of my own nature, I have been irre- 
sistibly impressed. I have beheld a scene which 
has produced no unusual effect on my thoughts. 
After the lapse of many years I have dreamed of 
this scene. It has hung on my memory, it has 
haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the per- 
tinacity of an object connected with human affec- 
tions. I have visited this scene again. Neither 
the dream could be dissociated from the landscape, 
nor the landscape from the dream, nor feelings, 
such as neither singly could have awakened, from 
both. But the most remarkable event of this nature, 
which ever occurred to me, happened five years 
ago at Oxford. I was walking with a friend, in 
the neighbourhood of that city, engaged in earnest 
and interesting conversation. We suddenly turned 
the corner of a lane, and the view, which its high 
banks and hedges had concealed, presented itself. 
The view consisted of a windmill, standing in one 
among many plashy meadows, inclosed with stone 
walls ; the irregular and broken ground, between 
the wall and the road on which we stood ; a long 
low hill behind the windmill, and a grey covering 






SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 



of uniform eknd npreail orer the evening Bky. it 

,'iat season when tho last loaf had just fallen 
from tho siant and stunted a.sh. The seeno surely 

I ivr.nnon seeno ; tho noaoon ami the hour 
little calculated to kimllo lawless thought ; it was 
a tame uninteresting assemblage of objects, such 



as would drive the imagination for refuge in serious 
and Bober talk, to the evening fireside, and the 
dessert of winter fruits and wine. The effect which 
it produced on me was not such as could have been 
expected. I suddenly remembered to have seen 
that exact scene in some dream of long* 



FRAGMENTS. 



SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 



I. — PLAN OF A TREATISE ON MORALS. 

That great science which regards nature and 
the operations of the human mind, is popularly 
divided into Morals and Metaphysics. The latter 
relates to a just classification, and the assignment 
of distinct names to its ideas ; the former regards 
simply the determination of that arrangement of 
them which produces the greatest and most solid 
happiness. It is admitted that a virtuous or moral 
action, is that action which, when considered in all 
its accessories and consequences, is fitted to pro- 
duce the highest pleasure to the greatest number 
of sensitive beings. The laws according to which 
all pleasure, since it cannot be equally felt by all 
sensitive beings, ought to be distributed by a volun- 
tary agent, are reserved for a separate chapter. 

The design of this little treatise is restricted to 
the development of the elementary principles of 
morals. As far as regards that purpose, meta- 
physical science will be treated merely so far as a 
source of negative truth ; whilst morality will be 
considered as a science, respecting which we can 
arrive at positive conclusions. 

The misguided imaginations of men have ren- 
dered the ascertaining of what is not true, the 
principal direct service which metaphysical science 
can bestow upon moral science. Moral science 
itself is the doctrine of the voluntary actions of 
man, as a sentient and social being. These 
actions depend on the thoughts in his mind. But 
there is a mass of popular opinion, from which 
the most enlightened persons are seldom wholly 
free, into the truth or falsehood of which it is 
incumbent on us to inquire, before we can arrive 
at any firm conclusions as to the conduct which 
we ought to pursue in the regulation of our own 
minds, or towards our fellow-beings ; or before we 
can ascertain the elementary laws, according to 
which these thoughts, from which these actions 
flow, are originally combined. 



The object of the forms according to which 
human society is administered, is the happiness of 
the individuals composing the communities which 
they regard, and these forms are perfect or imper- 
fect in proportion to the degree in which they 
promote this end. 

This object is not merely the quantity of happi- 
ness enjoyed by individuals as sensitive beings, but 
the mode in which it should be distributed among 
them as social beings. It is not enough, if such 
a coincidence can be conceived as possible, that 
one person or class of persons should enjoy the 
highest happiness, whilst another is suffering a 
disproportionate degree of misery. It is necessary 
that the happiness produced by the common efforts, 
and preserved by the common care, should be 
distributed according to the just claims of each 
individual ; if not, although the quantity produced 
should be the same, the end of society would 
remain unfulfilled. The object is in a compound 
proportion to the quantity of happiness produced, 
and the correspondence of the mode in which it is 
distributed, to the elementary feelings of man as a 
social being. 

The disposition in an individual to promote this 
object is called virtue ; and the two constituent 
parts of virtue, benevolence and justice, are cor- 
relative with these two great portions of the only 
true object of all voluntary actions of a human 
being. Benevolence is the desire to be the author 

* Here I teas obliged to leave of, overcome by thrilling 
horror. This remark closes this fragment, which was 
written in 1815. I remember well his coming to me from 
writing it, pale and agitated, to seek refuge in conver- 
sation from the fearful emotions it exeited. No man, as 
these fragments prove, had such keen sensations as Shelley. 
His nervous temperament was wound up by the delicacy 
of his health to an intense degree of sensibility, and while 
his active mind pondered for ever upon, and drew con- 
clusions from his sensations, his reveries increased their 
vivacity, till they mingled with, and made one with 
thought, and both became absorbing and tumultuous, 
even to physical pain — M. S- 



SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 



63 



of good, and justice the apprehension of the manner 
in which good ought to he done. 

Justice and benevolence result from the ele- 
mental')- laws of the human mind. 



CHAPTER I. 

ON THE NATURE OF VIRTUE. 

Sect. 1. General View of the Nature and Objects of Vir- 
tue. — 2. The Origin and Basis of Virtue, as founded on 
the Elementary Principles of Mind. — 3. The Laws which 
flow from the nature of Mind regulating the application 
of those principles to human actions. — 4. Virtue, a 
possible attribute of man. 

We exist in the midst of a multitude of beings 
like ourselves, upon whose happiness most ot our 
actions exert some obvious and decisive influence. 

The regulation of this influence is the object of 
moral science. 

We know that we are susceptible of receiving 
painful or pleasurable impressions of greater or less ! 
intensity and duration. That is called good which 
produces pleasure ; that is called evil which pro- 
duces pain. These are general names, applicable 
to every class of causes, from which an overbalance 
of pain or pleasure may result. But when a 
htiman being is the active instrument of generating 
or diffusing happiness, the principle through which 
it is most effectually instrumental to that purpose, 
is called virtue. And benevolence, or the desire 
to be the author of good, united with justice, or an 
apprehension of the manner in which that good is 
to be done, constitutes virtue. 

But, wherefore should a man be benevolent and 
just ? The immediate emotions of his nature, 
especially in its most inartificial state, prompt him 
to inflict pain, and to arrogate dominion. He 
desires to heap superfluities to bis own store, 
although others perish with famine. He is pro- 
pelled to guard against the smallest invasion of his 
own liberty, though he reduces others to a condi- 
tion of the most pitiless servitude. He is revenge- 
ful, proud and selfish. Wherefore should he curb 
these propensities ? 

It. is inquired, for what reason a human being 
should engage in procuring the happiness, or re- 
frain from producing the pain of another ? When 
a reason is required to prove the necessity of 
adopting any system of conduct, what is it that 
the objector demands ? He requires proof of that 
system of conduct being such as will most effectu- 
ally promote the happiness of mankind. To 
demonstrate this, is to render a moral reason. 
Such is the object of Virtue. 

A common sophism, which, like many others, 
depends on the abuse of a metaphorical expression 
to a literal purpose, has produced much of the 



confusion which has involved the theory of morals, 
it is said that no person is bound to be just or 
kind, if, on his neglect, he should fail to incur 
some penalty. Duty is obligation. There can be 
no obligation without an obliger. Virtue is a law, 
to which it is the will of the lawgiver that we 
should conform ; which will we should in no 
manner be bound to obey, unless some dreadful 
punishment were attached to disobedience. This 
is the philosophy of slavery and superstition. 

In fact, no person can be bound or obliged, 
without some power preceding to bind and oblige. 
If I observe a man bound hand and foot, I know 
that some one bound him. But if I observe him 
returning self-satisfied from the performance of 
some action, by which he has been the willing 
author of extensive benefit, I do not infer that 
the anticipation of hellish agonies, or the hope of 
heavenly reward, has constrained him to such an 
act.* 

***** 

It remains to be stated in what manner the 
sensations which constitute the basis of virtue 
originate in the human mind ; what are the laws 
which it receives there ; how far the principles of 
mind allow it to be an attribute of a human being ; 
and, lastly, what is the probability of persuading 
mankind to adopt it as a universal and systematic 
motive of conduct. 



BENEVOLENCE. 

There is a class of emotions which we instinct- 
ively avoid. A human being, such as is man con- 
sidered in his origin, a child a month old, has a 
very imperfect consciousness of the existence of 
other natures resembling itself. All the energies 
of its being are directed to the extinction of the 
pains with which it is perpetually assailed. At 
length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures 
susceptible of sensations similar to its own. It is 
very late before children attain to this knowledge. 
If a child observes, without emotion, its nurse or 
its mother suffering acute pain, it is attributable 
rather to ignorance than insensibility. So soon as 
the accents and gestures, significant of pain, are 
referred to the feelings which they express, they 
awaken in the mind of the beholder a desire that 
they should cease. Pain is thus apprehended to be 
evil for its own sake, without any other necessary 
reference to the mind by which its existence is 
perceived, than such as is indispensable to its per- 
ception. The tendencies of our original sensations, 
indeed, all have for their object the preservation 
of our individual being. But these are passive 

* A leaf of manuscript is wanting here, manifestly treat 
incr of self-love and disinterestedness — M. S. 



64 



SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 



and unconscious. In proportion as the mind 
acquires an active power, Che empire of these tcn- 
dencies beoomea limitod. Thus an infant, a savage, 

and a solitary boast, is soltish, because its mind is 
incapable of receiving an accurate intimation of 
tho nature of pain as existing in beings resembling 

itsolt". Tho inhabitant of a highly civilised com- 
munity will more acutely sympathise with the 
sufferings and enjoyments of others, than the inha- 
bitant of a society of a less degree of civilisation. 
He who shall have cultivated his intellectual powers 
by familiarity with the highest specimeus of poetry 
and philosophy, will usually sympathise more than 
one engaged in the less refined functions of manual 
labour. Every one has experience of the fact, 
that to sympathise with the sufferings of another, 
is :o enjoy a transitory oblivion of his own. 

The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as 
it were, of perceiving and abhorring evil, however 
remote from the immediate sphere of sensations 
with which that individual mind is conversant. 
Imagination or mind employed in prophetically 
imaging forth its objects, is that faculty of human 
nature on which every gradation of its progress, 
nay, every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain 
or pleasure, if subtly analysed, will be found to 
consist entirely in prospect. The oidy distinction 
between the selfish man and the virtuous man is, 
that the imagination of the former is confined 
within a d arrow limit, whilst that of the latter 
embraces a comprehensive circumference. In this 
sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be 
inseparable, and criteria of each other. Selfishness 
is the offspring of ignorance and mistake ; it is the 
portion of unreflecting infancy, and savage soli- 
tude, or of those whom toil or evil occupations 
have blunted or rendered torpid ; disinterested 
benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagina- 
tion, and has an intimate connexion with ail the 
arts wdiich add ornament, or dignity, or power, or 
stability to the social state of man. Virtue is thus 
entirely a refinement of civilised life ; a creation 
of the human mind ; or, rather, a combination 
which it has made, according to elementary rules 
contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by 
the relations established between man and man. 

All the theories which have refined and exalted 
humanity, or those which have been devised as 
alleviations of its mistakes and evils, have been 
based upon the elementary emotions of disinterest- 
edness, which we feel to constitute the majesty of 
our nature. Patriotism, as it existed in the ancient 
republics, was never, as has been supposed, a cal- 
culation of personal advantages. When Mutius 
Scaevola thrust his hand into the burning coals, 
and Regulus returned to Carthage, and Epicharis 



sustained the rack silently, in the torments of which 
she knew that she would speedily perish, rather 
than betray the conspirators to the tyrant ;* these 
illustrious persons certainly made a small estimate 
of their private interest. If it be said that they 
sought posthumous fame ; instances are not want- 
ing in history which prove that men have even 
defied infamy for the sake of good. But there is 
a great error in the world with respect to the 
selfishness of fame. It is certainly possible that 
a person should seek distinction as a medium of 
personal gratification. But the love of fame is 
frequently no more than a desire that the feelings of 
others should confirm, illustrate, and sympathise 
with, our own. In this respect it is allied with all 
that draws us out of ourselves. It is the "last 
infirmity of noble minds." Chivalry was likewise 
founded on the theory of self-sacrifice. Love 
possesses so extraordinary a power over the human 
heart, only because disinterestedness is united with 
the natural propensities. These propensities them- 
selves are comparatively impotent in cases where 
the imagination of pleasure to be given, as well as 
to be received, does not enter into the account. 
Let it not be objected that patriotism, and chi- 
valry, and sentimental love, have been the fountains 
of enormous mischief. They are cited only to 
establish the proposition that, according to the 
elementary principles of mind, man is capable of 
desiring and pursuing good for its own sake. 



The benevolent propensities are thus inherent 
in the human mind. We are impelled to seek the 
happiness of others. We experience a satis- 
faction in being the authors of that happiness. 
Everything that fives is open to impressions of 
pleasure and pain. We are led by our benevolent 
propensities to regard every human being indif- 
ferently with whom we come in contact. They 
have preference only with respect to those who 
offer themselves most obviously to our notice. 
Human beings are indiscriminating and blind ; 
they will avoid inflicting pain, though that pain 
should be attended with eventual benefit ; they 
will seek to confer pleasure without calculating the 
mischief that may result. They benefit one at 
the expense of many. 

There is a sentiment in the human mind that re- 
gulates benevolence in its application as a principle 
of action. This is the sense of justice. Justice, as 
well as benevolence, is an elementary law of human 
nature. It is through this principle that men are 
impelled to distribute any means of pleasure which 



SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 



Ub 



benevolence may suggest the communication of to 
others, in equal portions among an equal number 
of applicants. If ten men arc shipwrecked on a 
desert island, they distribute whatever subsistence 
may remain to them, into equal portions among 
themselves. If six of them conspire to deprive the 
remaining four of their share, their conduct is 
termed unjust. 

The existence of pain has been shown to be a 
circumstance which the human mmd regards with 
dissatisfaction, and of which it desires the cessa- 
tion. It is equally according to its nature to desire 
that the advantages to be enjoyed by a limited 
number of persons should be enjoyed equally by 
all. This proposition is supported by the evidence 
of indisputable facts. Tell some ungarbled tale of 
a number of persons being made the victims of the 
enjoyments of one, and he who would appeal in 
favour of any system which might produce such an 
evil to the primary emotions of our nature, would 
have nothing to reply. Let two persons, equally 
strangers, make application for some benefit in the 
possession of a third to bestow, and to which he 
feels that they have an equal claim. They are 
both sensitive beings ; pleasure and pain affect 
them alike. 



CHAPTER II. 

It is foreign to the general scope of this little 
Treatise to encumber a simple argument by con- 
troverting any of the trite objections of habit or 
fanaticism. But there are two ; the first, the 
basis of all political mistake, and the second, the 
prolific cause and effect of religious error, which it 
seems useful to refute. 

First, it is inquired, " Wherefore should a man 
be benevolent and just ?" The answer has been 
given in the preceding chapter. 

If a man persists to inquire why he ought to 
promote the happiness of mankind, he demands a 
mathematical or metaphysical reason for a moral 
action. The absurdity of this scepticism is more 
apparent, but not less real than the exacting a 
moral reason for a mathematical or metaphysical 
fact. If any person should refuse to admit that all 
the radii of a circle are of equal length, or that 
human actions are necessarily determined by 
motives, until it could be proved that these radii 
and these actions uniformly tended to the produc- 
tion of the greatest general good, who would not 
wonder at the unreasonable and capricious asso- 
ciation of his ideas ? 



The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I 
imagine, at this advanced era of human intellect, 
he held excused from entering into a controversy 
with those reasoners, if such there are, who would 
claim an exemption from its decrees in favour of 
any one among those diversified systems of obscure 
opinion respecting morals, which, under the name 
of religions, have hi various ages and countries pre- 
vailed among mankind. Besides that if, as these 
reasoners have pretended, eternal torture or happi- 
ness will ensue as the consequence of certain 
actions, we should be no nearer the possession of a 
standard to determine what actions were right and 
wrong, even if this pretended revelation, which is 
by no means the case, had furnished us with a 
complete catalogue of them. The character of 
actions as virtuous or vicious would by no means 
be determined alone by the personal advantage or 
disadvantage of each moral agent individually con- 
sidered. Indeed, an action is often virtuous in 
proportion to the greatness of the personal calamity 
which the author willingly draws upon himself by 
daring to perform it. It is because an action pro- 
duces an overbalance of pleasure or pain to the 
greatest number of sentient beings, and not merely 
because its consequences are beneficial or injurious 
to the author of that action, that it is good or evil. 
Nay, this latter consideration has a tendency to 
pollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch as it consists 
in the motive rather than in the consequences of an 
action. A person who should labour for the hap- 
piness of mankind lest he should be tormented 
eternally in Hell, would, with reference to that 
motive, possess as little claim to the epithet of -vir- 
tuous, as he who should torture, imprison, and 
burn them alive, a more usual and natural con- 
sequence of such principles, for the sake of the 
enjoyments of Heaven. 

My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may 
direct me to perform or to refrain from a par- 
ticular action ; indicating a certain arbitrary pe- 
nalty in the event of disobedience within his power 
to inflict. My action, if modified by his menaces, 
can in no degree participate in virtue. He has 
afforded me no criterion as tovwhat is right or 
wrong. A king, or an assembly of men, may publish 
a proclamation affixing any penalty to any par- 
ticular action, but that is not immoral because such 
penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident than 
that the epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the re- 
fraining from that action on account of the evil 
arbitrarily attached to it. If the action is in itself 
beneficial, virtue would rather consist in not re- 
fraining from it, but in firmly defying the personal 
consequences attached to its performance. 

Some usurper of supernatural energy might 






SPKCIT NATIONS ON MORALS. 



subdue the whole globe to his power ; he might 
possess now and unheard-of resources for enduing 
his punishments with the most terrible attributes 

o\' pain. The torments of his victims might bo in- 
tense in their degree, and protracted to an infinite 
duration. Still the u will of the lawgiver " would 
afford no surer criterion as to what actions were 
right or wrong. It would only increase the pos- 
sible virtue of those who refuse to become the 
instruments of his tyranny. 

II.— MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE 
DIFFERENCE, NOT THE RESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS. 

The internal influence, derived from the consti- 
tution of the mind from which they flow, produces 
that peculiar modification of actions, which makes 
them intrinsically good or evil. 

To attain an apprehension of the importance of 
this distinction, let us visit, in imagination, the pro- 
ceedings of some metropolis. Consider the multi- 
tude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey, 
hi thought, the actions of the several classes into 
which they are divided. Their obvious actions 
are apparently uniform : the stability of human 
society seems to be maintained sufficiently by the 
uniformity of the conduct of its members, both 
with regard to themselves, and with regard to 
others. The labourer arises at a certain horn', and 
applies himself to the task enjoined him. The 
functionaries of government and law are regularly 
employed in their offices and courts. The trader 
holds a train of conduct from which he never 
deviates. The ministers of religion employ an 
accustomed language, and maintain a decent and 
equable regard. The army is drawn forth, the 
motions of every soldier are such as they were 
expected to be ; the general commands, and his 
words are echoed from troop to troop. The do- 
mestic actions of men are, for the most part, un- 
distinguishable one from the other, at a superficial 
glance. The actions which are classed under the 
general appellation of marriage, education, friend- 
ship, &c, are perpetually going on, and to a super- 
ficial glance, are similar one to the other. 

But, if we would see the truth of things, they 
must be stripped of this fallacious appearance of 
uniformity. In truth, no one action has, when 
considered in its whole extent, any essential re- 
semblance with any other. Each individual, who 
composes the vast multitude which we have been 
contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind, 
which, whilst the features of the great mass of his 
actions remain uniform, impresses the minuter 
lineaments with its peculiar hues. Thus, whilst 
his life, as a whole, is like the fives of other men, 
in detail, it is most unlike ; and the more sub- 



divided the actions become ; that is, the more they 

enter into that class which have a vital influence 

on the happiness of others and his own, so much 

the more are they distinct from those of other 

men. 

" Those little, nameless unremembered acts 

Of kindness and of love," 

as well as those deadly outrages which are in- 
flicted by a look, a word — or less — the very 
refraining from some faint and most evanescent 
expression of countenance ; these flow from a 
profounder source than the series of our habitual 
conduct, which, it has been already said, derives 
its origin from without. These are the actions, and 
such as these, which make human fife what it is, 
and are the fountains of all the good and evil with 
which its entire surface is so widely and impar- 
tially overspread ; and though they are called 
minute, they are called so in compliance with the 
blindness of those who cannot estimate their im- 
portance. It is in the due appreciating the general 
effects of their peculiarities, and in cultivating the 
habit of acquiring decisive knowledge respecting 
the tendencies arising out of them in particular 
cases, that the most important part of moral 
science consists. The deepest abyss of these vast 
and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary that we 
should visit. 

This is the difference between social and indi- 
vidual man. Not that this distinction is to be con- 
sidered definite, or characteristic of one human 
being as compared with another, it denotes rather 
two classes of agency, common in a degree to every 
human being. None is exempt, indeed, from that 
species of influence which affects, as it were, the 
surface of his being, and gives the specific outline 
to his conduct. Almost all that is ostensible sub- 
mits to that legislature created by the general re- 
presentation of the past feelings of mankind — im- 
perfect as it is from a variety of causes, as it exists 
in the government, the religion, and domestic 
habits. Those who do not nominally, yet actually, 
submit to the same power. The external features 
of their conduct, indeed, can no more escape it, 
than the clouds can escape from the stream of the 
wind ; and his opinion, which he often hopes he 
has dispassionately secured from all contagion of 
prejudice and vulgarity, would be found, on ex- 
amination, to be the inevitable excrescence of the 
very usages from which he vehemently dissents. 
Internally all is conducted otherwise ; the effi- 
ciency, the essence, the vitality of actions, derives 
its colour from what is no ways contributed to 
from any external source. Like the plant, which 
while it derives the accident of its size and shape 
from the soil in which it springs, and is cankered, 



K>N ; ok, THE ILIA I). 



G7 



ur distorted, or inflated, yet retains those qualities 
whih essentially divide it from all others ; so that 
hemlock continues to he poison, and the violet does 
not cease to emit its odour in whatever soil it may 
grow. 

We consider our own nature loo superficially. 



We look on all that in ourselves with which we 
can discover a resemblance in others ; and con- 
sider those resemblances as the materials of moral 
knowledge. It is in the differences that it actually 

j consists. 



ION; OR, OF THE ILIAD; 

JTranslateB from ©lato. 



Socrates and Ion. 

Socrates. — Hail to thee, Ion I from whence 
returnest thou amongst us now ? — from thine own 
native Ephesus 1 

Iox. — No, Socrates ; I come from Epidaurus 
and the feasts in honour of iEsculapius. 

Socrates. — Had the Epidaurians instituted a 
contest of rhapsody in honour of the God 1 

Iox. — And not in rhapsodies alone ; there were 
contests in every species of music. 

Socrates. — And in which did you contend ? 
And what was the success of your efforts 1 

Iox. — I bore away the first prize at the games, 
O Socrates. 

Socrates. — Well done ! You have now only to 
consider how you shall win the Panathenaea. 

Iox. — That may also happen, God willing. 

Socrates. — Your profession, Ion, has often 
appeared to me an enviable one. For, together 
with the nicest care of your person, and the most 
studied elegance of dress, it imposes upon you the 
necessity of a familiar acquaintance with many 
and excellent poets, and especially with Homer, 
the most aa^niirable of them all. Nor is it merely 
because you can repeat the verses of this great 
poet, that I envy you, but because you fathom his 
inmost thoughts. For he is no rhapsodist who does 
not understand the whole scope and intention of 
the poet, and is not capable of interpreting it to 
his audience. This he cannot do without a full 
comprehension of the meaning of the author he 
undertakes to illustrate ; and worthy, indeed, of 
envy are those who can fulfil these conditions, 

Iox. — Thou speakest truth, Socrates. And, 
indeed, I have expended my study particularly on 
this part of my profession. I flatter myself that 
no man living excels me in the interpretation of 
Homer ; neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus, nor 
Stesimbrotus the Thasian, nor Glauco, nor any 
other rhapsodist of the present times can express 
so many various and beautiful thoughts upon Homer 
as I can. 



Socrates. — I am persuaded of your eminent 
skill, O Ion. You will not, I hope, refuse me a 
specimen of it 1 

Iox. — And, indeed, it would be worth your while 
to hear me declaim upon Homer. I deserve a 
golden crown from his admirers. 

Socrates. — And I will find leisure some day or 
other to request you to favour me so far. At 
present, I will only trouble you with one question. 
Do you excel in explaining Homer alone, or are 
you conscious of a similar power with regard to 
Hesiod and Archilochus ? 

Iox. — I possess this high degree of skill with 
regard to Homer alone, and I consider that suffi- 
cient. 

Socrates. — Are there any subjects upon which 
Homer and Hesiod say the same things ? 

Iox. — Many, as it seems to me. 

Socrates. — Whether do you demonstrate these 
things better in Homer or Hesiod ? 

Iox. — In the same manner, doubtless ; inasmuch 
as they say the same words with regard to the 
same things. 

Socrates. — But with regard to those things in 
which they differ ; — Homer and Hesiod both treat 
of divination, do they not ? 

Iox. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — Do you think that you or a diviner 
would make the best exposition, respecting all that 
these poets say of divination, both as they agree 
and as they differ ? 

Ion. — A diviner probably. 

Socrates. — Suppose you were a diviner, do you 
not think that you could explain the discrepancies 
of those poets on the subject of your profession, if 
you understand their argument ? 

Iox. — Clearly so. 

Socrates. — How does it happen then that yon 
are possessed of skill to illustrate Homer, and not 
Hesiod, or any other poet in an equal degree ? Is 
the subject-matter of the poetry of Homer different 
from all other poets'? Does he not principally 
F 2 



68 



ION ; OR, THE ILTAD. 



trout of war ami social intercourse, and of the 

distinct functions and characters of the brave man 
and the coward, the professional and private per- 
son, the mutual relations which subsist between the 
Gods and men ; together with the modes of their 
intercourse, the phenomena of Heaven, the secrets 
of Hades, and the origin of Gods and heroes \ Are 
not these the materials from which Homer wrought 
his poem \ 

Ion.— Assuredly, Socrates. 

Socrates. — And the other poets, do they not 
treat of the same matter ? 

Ion. — Certainly : but not like Homer. 

Socrates. — How ! Worse ? 

Ion. — Oh ! far worse. 

Socrates. — Then Homer treats of them better 
than they ? 

Ion. — Oh ! Jupiter ! — how much better ! 

Socrates. — Amongst a number of persons em- 
ployed in solving a problem of arithmetic, might 
not a person know, my dear Ion, which had given 
the right answer ? 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — The same person who had been aware 
of the false one, or some other ? 

Ion. — The same, clearly. 

Socrates. — That is, some one who understood 
arithmetic ? 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — Among a number of persons giving 
their opinions on the wholesomeness of different 
foods, whether would one person be capable to 
pronounce upon the rectitude of the opinions of 
those who judged rightly, and another on the 
erroneousness of those which were incorrect, or 
would the same person be competent to decide 
respecting them both ? 

Ion. — The same, evidently. 

Socrates. — What would you call that person ? 

Ion. — A physician. 

Socrates. — We may assert then, universally, 
that the same person who is competent to deter- 
mine the truth, is competent also to determine the 
falsehood of whatever assertion is advanced on the 
same subject ; and, it is manifest, that he who 
cannot judge respecting the falsehood, or unfitness 
of what is said upon a given subject, is equally 
incompetent to determine upon its truth or beauty \ 

Ion. — Assuredly. 

Socrates. — The same person would then be 
competent or incompetent for both ? 

Ion.— Yes. 

Socrates. — Do you not say that Homer and the 
other poets, and among them Hesiod and Archi- 
lochus, speak of the same things, but unequally ; 
one better and the other worse ? 



Ion. -And I speak truth. 

Socrates. — But if you can judge of what is well 
said by the one, you must also be able to judge 
of what is ill said by another, inasmuch as it 
expresses less correctly. 

Ion. — It should seem so. 

Socrates. — Then, my dear friend, we should not 
err if we asserted that Ion possessed a like power 
of illustration respecting Homer and all other 
poets ; especially since he confesses that the same 
person must be esteemed a competent judge of all 
those who speak on the same subjects ; inasmuch 
as those subjects are understood by him when 
spoken of by one, and the subject-matter of almost 
all the poets is the same. 

Ion. — What can be the reason then, Socrates, 
that when any other poet is the subject of conver- 
sation I cannot compel my attention, and I feel 
utterly unable to declaim anything worth talking 
of, and positively go to sleep ? But when any one 
makes mention of Homer, my mind applies itself 
without effort to the subject ; I awaken as if it 
were from a trance, and a profusion of eloquent 
expressions suggest themselves involuntai'ily ? 

Socrates. — It is not difficult to suggest the cause 
of this, my dear friend. You are evidently unable 
to declaim on Homer according to art and know- 
ledge ; for did your art endow you with this 
faculty, you would be equally capable of exerting 
it with regard to any other of the poets. Is not 
poetry, as an art or a faculty, a thing entire and 
one ? 

Ion.' — Assuredly. 

Socrates. — The same mode of consideration 
must be admitted with respect to all arts which are 
severally one and entire. Do you desire to hear 
what I understand by this, O Ion ? 

Ion. — Yes, by Jupiter, Socrates, I am delighted 
with listening to you wise men. 

Socrates. — It is you who are wise, my dear 
Ion ; you rhapsodists, actors, and the authors of 
the poems you recite. I, like an unprofessional 
and private man, can only speak the truth. Ob- 
serve how common, vulgar, and level to the com- 
prehension of any one, is the question which I now 
ask relative to the same consideration belonging to 
one entire art. Is not painting an art whole and 
entire I 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — Did you ever know a person compe- 
tent to judge of the paintings of Polygnotus, the 
son of Aglaophon, and incompetent to judge of the 
production of any other painter ; who, on the sup- 
position of the works of other painters being exhi- 
bited to him, was wholly at a loss, and very much 
inclined to go to sleep, and lost all faculty of 



ION ; OR, THE ILIAD. 



(SI) 



reasoning on the subject ; but when his opinion was 
required of Polygnotus, or any one single painter 
you please, awoke, paid attention to the subject, and 
discoursed on it with great eloquence and sagacity ? 
Ion. — Never, by Jupiter ! 
Socrates. — Did you ever know any one very 
skilful in determining the merits of Dsedalus, the 
son of Metion, Epius, the son of Panopus, Theo- 
dorus the Samian, or any other great sculptor, 
who was immediately at a loss, and felt sleepy the 
moment any other sculptor was mentioned % 
Ion. — I never met with such a person certainly. 
Socrates. — Nor, do I think, that you ever met 
with a man professing himself a judge of poetry 
and rhapsody, and competent to criticise either 
Olympus, Thamyris, Orpheus, or Phemius of 
Ithaca, the rhapsodist, who, the moment he came 
to Ion the Ephesian, felt himself quite at a loss, 
utterly incompetent to judge whether he rhapso- 
dised well or ill. 

Ion. — I cannot refute you, Socrates, but of this 
I am conscious to myself : that I excel all men in 
the copiousness and beauty of my illustrations of 
Homer, as all who have heard me will confess, and 
with respect to other poets, I am deserted of this 
power. It is for you to consider what may be the 
cause of this distinction. 

Socrates. — I will tell you, Ion, what appears 
to me to be the cause of this inequality of power. 
It is that you are not master of any art for the 
illustration of Homer, but it is a divine influence 
which moves you, like that which resides in the 
stone called Magnet by Euripides, and Heraclea by 
the people. For not only does this stone possess 
the power of attracting iron rings, but it can com- 
municate to them the power of attracting other 
rings ; so that you may see sometimes a long chain 
of rings, and other iron substances, attached and 
suspended one to the other by this influence. And 
as the power of the stone circulates through all the 
links of this series, and attaches each to each, so 
the Muse, communicating through those whom she 
has first inspired, to all others capable of sharing 
in the inspiration, the influence of that first enthu- 
siasm, creates a chain and a succession. For the 
authors of those great poems which -we admire, do 
not attain to excellence through the rules of any 
art, but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse 
hi a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed 
by a spirit not their own. Thus the composers of 
lyrical poetry create those admh'ed songs of theirs 
in a state of divine insanity, like the Corybantes, 
who lose all control over their reason in the enthu- 
siasm of the sacred dance ; and, during this super- 
natural possession, are excited to the rhythm and 
harmony which they communicate to men. Like 



the Bacchantes, who, when possessed by the God 
draw honey and milk from the rivers, in which, 
when they come to their senses, they find nothing 
but simple water. For the souls of the poets, as 
poets tell us, have this peculiar ministration in the 
world. They tell us that these souls, flying like 
bees from flower to flower, and wandering over the 
gardens and the meadows and the honey-flowing 
fountains of the Muses, return to us laden with 
the sweetness of melody ; and arrayed as they are 
in the plumes of rapid imagination, they speak 
truth. For a poet is indeed a thing ethereally 
light, winged, and sacred, nor can he compose 
anything worth calling poetry until he becomes 
inspired, and, as it were, mad, or whilst any reason 
remains in him. For whilst a man retains any 
portion of the thing called reason, he is utterly 
incompetent to produce poetry or to vaticinate. 
Thus, those who declaim various and beautiful 
poetry upon any subject, as for instance upon 
Homer, are not enabled to do so by art or study ; 
but every rhapsodist or poet, whether dithyrambic, 
encomiastic, choral, epic, or iambic, is excellent hi 
proportion to the extent of his participation in the 
divine influence, and the degree in which the Muse 
itself has descended on him. In other respects, 
poets may be sufficiently ignorant and incapable. 
For they do not compose according to any art 
which they have acquired, but from the impulse of 
the divinity within them ; for did they know any 
rules of criticism according to which they could 
compose beautiful verses upon one subject, they 
would be able to exert the same faculty with 
respect to all or any other. The God seems pur- 
posely to have deprived all poets, prophets, and 
soothsayers of every particle of reason and under- 
standing, the better to adapt them to their employ- 
ment as his ministers and interpreters ; and that 
we, their auditors, may acknowledge that those 
who write so beautifully, are possessed, and address 
us, inspired by the God. [Tynnicus the Chalcidean, 
is a manifest proof of this, for he never before 
composed any poem worthy to be remembered ; 
and yet, was the author of that Paean which every- 
body sings, and which excels almost every other 
hymn, and which he, himself, acknowledges to have 
been inspired by the Muse. And, thus, it appears 
to me, that the God proves beyond a doubt, that 
these transcendant poems are not human as the 
work of men, but divine as coming from the God. 
Poets then are the interpreters of the divinities — 
each being possessed by some one deity ; and to 
make this apparent, the God designedly inspires 
the worst poets with the sublimest verse. Does it 
seem to you that I am in the right, O Ion ? 

I on. — Yes, by Jupiter ! My mhid is enlightened 



70 



ION ; OR, THE ILIAD. 



by your words. O Socrates, :\iul it appears to rue 

that g re a t poets interpret to us through some 
divine election of the Cod. 

CBS. - And do not you rhapsodists inter- 
pret pa 

Ion.— We do. 

\ pes. — Thus you interpret the interpreters I 

Ion. — Evidently. 

SOCRATES. — Remember this, and tell me ; and 
do not conceal that which I ask. When you de- 
i hum well, and strike your audience with admi- 
ration ; whether you sing of Ulysses rushing upon 
the threshold of his palace, discovering himself to 
the suitors, and pouring his shafts out at his feet ; 
or of Achilles assailing Hector ; or those affecting 
passages concerning Audromache, or Hecuba, or 
Priam, are you then self-possessed ? or, rather, are 
you not rapt and filled with such enthusiasm by 
the deeds you recite, that you fancy yourself m 
Ithaca or Troy, or wherever else the poem trans- 
ports you ? 

Ion. — You speak most truly, Socrates, nor will I 
deny it ; for, when I recite of sorrow, my eyes fill 
with tears ; and when of fearful or terrible deeds, 
ray hair stands on end, and my heart beats fast. 

Socrates. — Tell me, Ion, can we call him in his 
senses, who weeps while dressed in splendid gar- 
ments, and crowned with a golden coronal, not 
losing any of these things ? and is filled with fear 
when surrounded by ten thousand friendly persons, 
not one among whom desires to despoil or injure 
him ? 

Ion. — To say the truth, we could not. 

Socrates. — Do you often perceive your audience 
moved also ? 

Ion. — Many among them, and frequently. I, 
standing on the rostrum, see them weeping, with 
eyes fixed earnestly on me, and overcome by my 
declamation. I have need so to agitate them ; for 
if they weep, I laugh, taking their money ; if they 
should laugh, I must weep, going without it. 

Socrates. — Do you not perceive that your au- 
ditor is the last link of that chain which I have 
described as held together through the power of 
the magnet ? You rhapsodists and actors are the 
middle links, of which the poet is the first — and 
through all these the God influences whichever 
mind he selects, as they conduct this power one to 
the other ; and thus, as rings from the stone, so 
hangs a long series of chorus-dancers, teachers, and 
disciples from the Muse. Some poets are in- 
fluenced by one Muse, some by another ; we call 
them possessed, and this word really expresses the 
truth, for they are held. Others, who are inter- 
preters, are inspired by the first links, the poets, 
and are filled with enthusiasm, some by one, some 



by another ; some by Orpheus, some by 
but the greater number are possessed and inspired 
by Homer. You, Ion, are influenced by Homer. 
If you recite the works of any other poet, you get 
drowsy, and are at a loss what to say ; but when 
you hear any of the compositions of that poet you 
are roused, your thoughts are excited, and you 
grow eloquent ; — for what you say of Homer is not 
derived from any art or knowledge, but from divine 
inspiration and possession. As the Corybantes 
feel acutely the melodies of him by whom they are 
inspired, and abound with verse and gesture for 
his songs alone, and care for no other ; thus, you, 
Ion, are eloquent when you expound Homer, and 
are barren of words with regard to every other 
poet. And this explains the question you asked, 
wherefore Homer, and no other poet, inspires you 
with eloquence. It is that you are thus excellent 
in your praise, not through science, but from 
divine inspiration. 

Ion. — You say the truth, Socrates. Yet, I am 
surprised that you should be able to persuade me 
that I am possessed and insane when I praise 
Homer. I think I shall not appear such to you 
when you hear me. 

Socrates. — I desire to hear you, but not before 
you have answered me this one question. What 
subject does Homer treat best % for, surely, he does 
not treat all equally. 

Ion. — You are aware that he treats of every- 
thing. 

Socrates. — Does Homer mention subjects on 
which you are ignorant ? 

Ion. — What can those be ? 

Socrates. — Does not Homer frequently dilate on 
various arts — on chariot driving, for instance ? if I 
remember the verses, I will repeat them, 

Ion. — I will repeat them, for I remember them. 

Socrates. — Repeat what Nestor says to his son 
Antilochus, counselling him to be cautious in 
turning, during the chariot race at the funeral 
games of Patroclus. 

Autos Se K\wdffvcu evirXmrcp ivl ^L<ppa> i 

t Hk he apiarepa rdiiv arap rbu del-ibv 'hnrov 

Kewcu 6fioK\i](Xas i el£ai re ol rjvia xepaii/. 

'Ev vvcrar} 5e rot '[ttttos apiarepbs iyxpipty&flTw, 

'Us &u roi irXiifivr} ye SodartTerai ixtcpov iKecrdai 

KvkXov ttolt]to?o' \i6ov S 3 a\eaa8ai eiravpeiv. 

II. i//. 33.5.* 

* And warily proceed, 

A little bending to the left-hand steed ; 
But urge the right, and give him all the reins ; 
While thy strict hand his fellow's head restrains, 
And turns him short ; till, doubling as they roll, 
The wheel's round nave appears to brush the goal. 
Yet, not to break the car or lame the horse, 
Clear of the stony heap direct the course. 

Pope, Book 23. 



ION j OR, THE ILIAD. 



71 



Socrates. — Enough. Now, Ion, would a phy- 
sician or a charioteer be the better judge as to 
Homer's sagacity on this subject ? 

Ion. — Of course, a charioteer. 

Socrates. — Because he understands the art — 
or from what other reason ? 

Ion. — From his knowledge of the art. 

Socrates. — For one science is not gifted with 
the power of judging of another — a steersman, for 
instance, does not understand medicine ? 

Ion. — Without doubt. 

Socrates. — Nor a physician, architecture ? 

Ion.— Of course not. 

Socrates. — Is it not thus with every art I If we 
are adepts in one, we are ignorant of another. But 
first tell me, do not all arts differ one from the other ? 

Ion. — They do. 

Socrates. — For you, as well as T, can testify 
that when we say an art is the knowledge of one 
thing, we do not mean that it is the knowledge of 
another. 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — For, if each art contained the know- 
ledge of all tilings, why should we call them by 
different names ? we do so that we may distinguish 
them one from the other. Thus, you as well as I, 
know that these are five fingers ; and if I asked 
you whether we both meant the same thing or an- 
other, when we speak of arithmetic — would you 
not say the same ? 

Ion. — Yes. 

Socrates. — And tell me, when we learn one art, 
we must both learn the same things with regard to 
it ; and other things if we learn another ? 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — And he who is not versed in an art, 
is not a good judge of what is said or done with 
respect to it ? 

Ion. — Certainly not. 

Socrates. — To return to the verses which you 
just recited, do you think that you or a charioteer 
would be better capable of deciding whether Homer 
had spoken rightly or not ? 

Ion. — Doubtless a charioteer. 

Socrates. — For you are a rhapsodist, and not a 
charioteer ? 

Ion. — Yes. 

Socrates. — And the art of reciting verses is 
different from that of driving chariots \ 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — And if it is different, it supposes a 
knowledge of different things ? 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — And when Homer introduces Heca- 
mede, the concubine of Nestor, giving Machaon a 
posset to drink, and he speaks thus : — 



Otvtp Tlpauveicp, iirl 8' aiyc.ov Kvi) rvpbv 

Ki/r)(TTt x a ^ K *' l V' Tapa 8e Kp6p.iov iroT(pfyov*. 

It. A'. 639. 
Does it belong to the medical or rhapsodical art, 
to determine whether Homer speaks rightly on 
this subject? 

Ion. — The medical. 

Socrates. — And when he says — 

'H 5e fjLoKvfiSaiin} iKcArj is fivaabv iKai/ev, 
H T6 Kar' aypavAoio fiobs nepas e/j.fxe/j.av'ia 
"Epxsrat wfi^arfiai par Ixdvcrt trij/xa <pepovcra.-\- 

It. 6. 80. 

Does it belong to the rhapsodical or the piscatorial 
art, to determine whether he speaks rightly or 
not? 

Ion. — Manifestly to the piscatorial art. 

Socrates. — Consider whether you are not in- 
spired to make some such demand as this to 
me : — Come, Socrates, shice you have found in 
Homer an accurate description of these arts, assist 
me also in the inquiry as to his competence on the 
subject of soothsayers and divination ; and how 
far he speaks well or ill on such subjects ; for he 
often treats of them in the Odyssey, and especially 
when he introduces Theoclymenus the Soothsayer 
of the Melampians, prophesying to the Suitors : — 

Aai/xopi, ri Kanbv T^Se 7rao"xeTe ; vvktL fj.hu vjiioov 
ElAvarcu /ce^aAat re nrpoaonra Te vepde re yvia, 
OlpLcoyi) Se dedrje, dedaKpvvTai 5e irapeiai. 
EldwXwv re irpiov Trp6dvpov, -rrXeir} Se Kal avh)) 
'U/xivav '4pefi6(T8e inrb £6(pow yeAios §e 
Ovpavov e|o7rJ\c«jAe, itatct) d? €ir848popiev axAus.J 

, 351. 



Often too in the Iliad, as at the battle at the walls 
for he there says — 

*Opvis yap a<piv e^Atfe Trepr](T4p.€vai p.ep.aaxru', 
Alerbs v^iirdT^s, in apicrrspa. Xabv iipyuiv, 
$oivr\€VTa SpdicouTa (pepwv ovvxe&vi TreAccpov, 
Zuibv, €t' aairaipovTtx' Kal ovirca \t)9zto x<xp/i7js. 
K<fye yap abrbv exovra Kara (TttjOos irapa deiprj^, 

* Tempered in this, the nymph of form divine, 
Pours a large portion of the Pramnian wine ; 
With goats'-milk cheese, a flavorous taste hestows, 
And last with flour the smiling surface strews. 

Pope, Book 11. 
t Sbe plunged, and instant shot the dark profound : 
As, bearing death in the fallacious bait, 
From the bent angle sinks the leaden weight. 

Pope, Book 24. 
$ O race to death devote .' with Stygian shade 
Each destined peer impending Fates invade ; 
With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned. 
With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round ; 
Thick swarms the spacious ball with howling ghosts, 
To people Orcus, and the burning coasts. 
Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll, 
But universal night usurps the pole. 

Pope. Book 20. 



72 



ION ; OR, THE ILIAD. 



*IoVa<tfeis ott'ktw. 6 6° airb cdey ijice x^^i* 
*A\yf)<ras oSvvrjcri, /ueVy 6° iyndfipaK' 6jj.i\cff 
Aurbs 5e xXdytas e7T€TO Trvoiijs riW^oio.* 

II, ft. 

. it belongs to a soothsayer both to observe 
and to judge respecting such appearances as these. 

Ion. — And you assert the truth, Socrates. 

Socrates. — And you also, my dear Ion. For 
we have in our turn recited from the Odyssey and 
the Iliad, passages relating to vaticination, to me- 
dicine and the piscatorial art ; and as you are more [ 
skilled in Homer than I can be, do you now make 
mention of whatever relates to the rhapsodist and 
his art ; for a rhapsodist is competent above all 
other men to consider and pronounce on whatever 
has relation to his art. 

Ion. — Or with respect to everything else men- 
tioned by Homer. 

Socrates. — Do not be so forgetful as to say 
everything. A good memory is particularly neces- 
sary for a rhapsodist. 

Ion. — And what do I forget ? 

Socrates. — Do you not remember that you ad- 
mitted the art of reciting verses was different from 
that of driving chariots ? 

Ion. — I remember. 

Socrates. — And did you not admit that being 
different, the subjects of its knowledge must also 
be different ? 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — You will not assert that the art of 
rhapsody is that of universal knowledge ; a rhap- 
sodist may be ignorant of some things. 

Ion. — Except, perhaps, such things as we now 
discuss, Socrates. 

Socrates. — What do you mean by such subjects, 
besides those which relate to other arts ? And with 
which among them do you profess a competent 
acquaintance, since not with all ? 

Ion. — I imagine that the rhapsodist has a perfect 
knowledge of what it is becoming for a man to 
speak — what for a woman ; what for a slave, what 
for a free man ; what for the ruler, what for him 
who is governed. 

Socrates. — How ! do you think that a rhapso- 
dist knows better than a pilot what the captain of 
a ship in a tempest ought to say ? 

* A signal omen stopped the passing host, 
Their martial fury in their wonder lost. 
Jove's bird on sounding pinions beats the skies-, 
A bleeding serpent of enormous size 
His talons trussed, alive and curling round, 
He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound ; 
Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey, 
In airy circles wings his painful way, 
Floats on the winds and rends the heaven with cries : 
Amidst the host the fallen serpent lies. 

Pope, Book 12. 



Ion. — In such a circumstance I allow that the 
pilot would know best. 

Socrates. — Has the rhapsodist or the physician 
the clearest knowledge of what ought to be said to 
a sick man ? 

Ion. — In that case the physician. 

Socrates. — But you assert that he knows what 
a slave ought to say ? 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — To take for example, in the driving 
of cattle ; a rhapsodist would know much better 
than the herdsman what ought to be said to a slave 
engaged in bringing back a herd of oxen run wild ? 

Ion. — No, indeed. 

[Socrates. — But what a woman should say con- 
cerning spinning wool ? 

Ion. — Of course not. 

Socrates. — He would know, however, what a 
man, who is a general, shoidd say when exhorting 
his troops ? 

Ion. — Yes ; a rhapsodist would know that. 

Socrates. — How ! is rhapsody and strategy the 
same art? 

Ion. — I know what it is fitting for a general to 
say. 

Socrates. — Probably because you are learned 
in war, O Ion. For if you are equally expert in 
horsemanship and playing on the harp, you would 
know whether a man rode well or ill. But if I 
should ask you which understands riding best, a 
horseman or a harper, what would you answer ? 

Ion. — A horseman, of course. 

Socrates. — And if you knew a good player on 
the harp, you would hi the same way say that he 
understood harp-playing and not riding ? 

Ion. — Certainly. 

Socrates. — Since you understand strategy, you 
can tell me which is the most excellent^ the art of 
war or rhapsody 1 

Ion. — One does not appear to me to excel the 
other. 

Socrates. — One is not better than the other, say 
you ? Do you say that tactics and rhapsody are 
two arts or one ? 

Ion. — They appear to me to be the same. 

Socrates. — Then a good rhapsodist is also a 
good general. 

Ion. — Of course. 

Socrates. — And a good general is a good rhap- 
sodist ? 

Ion. — I do not say that. 

Socrates. — You said that a good rhapsodist was 
also a good general. 

Ion. — I did. 

Socrates. — Are you not the best rhapsodist in 
Greece ? 



MENEXENUS; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION. 



Ion. — By far, Socrates. 

Socrates. — And you are also the most excellent 
general among the Greeks ? 

Ion. — I am. I learned the art from Homer. 

Socrates. — How is it then, by Jupiter, that 
being both the best general and the best rhapso- 
dist among us, that you continually go about 
Greece rhapsodising, and never lead our armies ? 
Does it seem to you that the Greeks greatly 
need golden-crowned rhapsodists, and have no 
want of generals 1 

Ion. — My native town, O Socrates, is ruled by 
yours, and requires no general for her wars ; — and 
neither will your city nor the Lacedemonians elect 
me to lead their armies — you think your own 
generals sufficient. 

Socrates. — My good Ion, ore you acquainted 
with Apollodorus the Cyzieenian ? 

Ion. — What do you mean ? 

Socrates. — He whom, though a stranger, the 
Athenians often elected general ; and Phanosthenes 
the Andrian, and Heraclides the Clazomenian, all 
foreigners, but whom this city has chosen, as being 
great men, to lead its armies, and to fill other high 
offices. Would not, therefore, Ion the Ephesian 
be elected and honoured if he were esteemed 
capable ? Were not the Ephesians originally from 



Athens, and is Ephesus the least of cities? But 
if you spoke true, Ion, and praise Homer accord- 
ing to art and knowledge, you have deceived me, — 
since you declared that you were learned on the 
subject of Homer, and would communicate your 
knowledge to me — but you have disappointed me, 
and are far from keeping your word. For you will 
not explain in what you are so excessively clever, 
though I greatly desire to learn ; but, as various as 
Proteus, you change from one tiling to another, 
and to escape at last, you disappear in the form of 
a general, without disclosing yotir Homeric wisdom. 
If, therefore, you possess the learning which you 
promised to expound on the subject of Homer, you 
deceive me and are false. But if you are eloquent 
on the subject of this Poet, not through knowledge, 
but by inspiration, being possessed by him, ignorant 
the while of the wisdom and beauty you display, 
then I allow that you are no deceiver. Choose 
then whether you will be considered false or in- 
spired ? 

Ion. — It is far better, O Socrates, to be thought 
inspired. 

Socrates. — It is better both for you and for us, 
Ion, to say that you are the inspired, and not the 
learned, eulogist of Homer. 



MENEXENUS; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION. 
® jfratjment 



Socrates and Menexenus. 

Socrates. — Whence comest thou, Menexenus ? 
from the forum \ 

Menexenus. — Even so ; and from the senate- 
house. 

Socrates. — What was thy business with the 
senate ? Art thou persuaded that thou hast attained 
to that perfection of discipline and philosophy, 
from which thou mayest aspire to undertake 
greater matters 1 Wouldst thou, at thine age, my 
wonderful friend, assume to thyself the govern- 
ment of us who are thine elders, lest thy family 
should at any time fail in affording us a protector ? 

Menexenus. — If thou, Socrates, shouldst per- 
mit and counsel me to enter into public fife, I would 
earnestly endeavour to fit myself for the attempt. 
If otherwise, I would abstain. On the present 
occasion, I went to the senate-house, merely from 
having heard that the senate was about to elect 
one to speak concerning those who are dead. Thou 



knowest that the celebration of their funeral 
approaches ? 

Socrates. — Assuredly. But whom have they 
chosen ? 

Menexenus. — The election is deferred until to- 
morrow ; I imagine that either Dion or Archinus 
will be chosen. 

Socrates. — In truth, Menexenus, the condition 
of him who dies in battle is, in every respect, for- 
tunate and glorious. If he is poor, he is conducted 
to his tomb with a magnificent and honourable 
funeral, amidst the praises of all ; if even he were 
a coward, his name is included in a panegyric pro- 
nounced by the most learned men ; from which all 
the vulgar expressions, which unpremeditated com- 
position might admit, have been excluded by the 
careful labour of leisure ; who praise so admirably, 
enlarging upon every topic remotely, or imme- 
diately connected with the subject, and blending su 
eloquent a variety of expressions, that, praising in 



74 



MENEXENUS ; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION. 



ever? manner the state of which we are citizens, 
and those who have perished in battle, and the 
a n o ostar e who preceded our generation, and our- 
selves who vet live, they steal away our spirits 
as with enchantment. Whilst I listen to their 
praises, O Menexenus, I am penetrated with a 
very lofty conception of myself, and overcome by 
their flatteries. I appear to myself immeasurably 
more honourable and generous than before, and 
many of the strangers who are accustomed to 
accompany me, regard me with additional venera- 
tion, after haviug heard these relations ; they seem 
to consider the whole state, including me, much 
more worthy of admiration, after they have been 
soothed into persuasion by the orator. The opinion 
thus inspired of my own majesty will last me more 
than three days sometimes, and the penetrating 
melody of the words descends through the ears 
into the mind, and clings to it ; so that it is often 
three or four days before I come to my senses 
sufficiently to perceive in what part of the world I 
am, or succeed in persuading myself that I do not 
inhabit one of the islands of the blessed. So skil- 
ful are these orators of ours. 

Menexenus. — Thou always laughest at the ora- 
tors, Socrates. On the present occasion, how- 
ever, the unforeseen election will preclude the 
person chosen from the advantages of a preconcerted 
speech ; the speaker will probably be reduced to 
the necessity of extemporising. 

Socrates. — How so, my good friend ? Every 
one of the candidates has, without doubt, his 
oration prepared ; and if not, there were little 
difficulty, on this occasion, of inventing an unpre- 
meditated speech. If, indeed, the question were 
of Athenians, who should speak in the Peloponne- 
sus ; or of Peloponnesians, who should speak at 
Athens, an orator who would persuade and be 
applauded, must employ all the resources of his 
skill. But to the orator who contends for the 
approbation of those whom he praises, success 
will be little difficult. 

Menexenus. — Is that thy opinion, Socrates ? 

Socrates. — In truth it is. 

Menexenus. — Shouldst thou consider thyself 
competent to pronounce this oration, if thou shouldst 
be chosen by the senate ? 

Socrates. — There would be nothing astonishing 
if I should consider myself equal to such an under- 
taking. My mistress in oratory was perfect in 
the science which she taught, and had formed 
many other excellent orators, and one of the most 



eminent among the Greeks, Pericles, the son of 

Xantippus. 

Menexenus. — Who is she ? Assuredly thou 
meanest Aspasia. 

Socrates. — Aspasia, and Connus the son of 
Metrobius, the two instructors. From the former 
of these I learned rhetoric, and from the latter 
music. There would be nothing wonderful if a 
man so educated should be capable of great 
energy of speech. A person who should have 
been instructed in a maimer totally different from 
me; who should have learned rhetoric from 
Antiphon the son of Rhamnusius, and music from 
Lampses, would be competent to succeed in such an 
attempt as praising the Athenians to the Athenians. 

Menexenus. — And what shouldst thou have to 
say, if thou wert chosen to pronounce the oration ? 

Socrates. — Of my own, probably nothing. But 
yesterday I heard Aspasia declaim a funeral ora- 
tion over these same persons. She had heard, as 
thou sayest, that the Athenians were about to 
choose an orator, and she took the occasion of 
suggesting a series of topics proper for such an 
orator to select ; in part extemporaneously, and in 
part such as she had already prepared. I think it 
probable that she composed the oration by inter- 
weaving such fragments of oratory as Pericles 
might have left. 

Menexenus. — Rememberest thou what Aspasia 
said? 

Socrates. — Unless I am greatly mistaken. I 
learned it from her ; and she is so good a school- 
mistress, that I should have been beaten if I had 
not been perfect in my lesson. 

Menexenus. — Why not repeat it to me ? 

Socrates. — I fear lest my mistress be angry, 
should I publish her discourse. 

Menexenus. — 0, fear not. At least deliver a 
discourse ; you will do what is exceedingly de- 
lightful to me, whether it be of Aspasia or any 
other. I entreat you to do me this pleasure. 

Socrates. — But you will laugh at me, who 5 being 
old, attempt to repeat a pleasant discourse. 

Menexenus. — no, Socrates ; I entreat you to 
speak, however it may be. 

Socrates. — I see that I must do what you re- 
quire. In a little while, if you should ask me to 
strip naked and dance, I shall be unable to refuse 
you, at least, if we are alone. Now, listen. She 
spoke thus, if I recollect, beginning with the dead, 
in whose honour the oration is supposed to have 
been delivered. 



FRAGMENTS 



FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 



I. But it would be almost impossible to build 
your city in such a situatiou that it wuuld need no 
imposts. — Impossible. — Other persons would then 
be required, who might undertake to conduct from 
another city those things of which they stood in 
need. — Certainly. — But the merchant who should 
return to his own city, without any of those 
articles which it needed, would return empty- 
handed. It will be necessary, therefore, not only 
to produce a sufficient supply, but such articles, 
both in quantity and in kind, as may be required to 
remunerate those who conduct the imports. There 
will be needed then more husbandmen, and other 
artificers, in our city. There will be needed also 
other persons who will undertake the conveyance 
of the imports and the exports, and these persons 
are called merchants. If the commerce which 
these necessities produce is carried on by sea, other 
persons will be required who are accustomed to 
nautical affairs. And, in the city itself, how shall 
the products of each man's labour be transported 
from one to another ; those products, for the sake 
of the enjoyment and the ready distribution of 
which, they were first induced to institute a civil 
society ? — By selling and buying, surely. — A 
market and money, as a symbol of exchange, 
arises out of this necessity. — Evidently. — When 
the husbandman, or any other artificer, brings the 
produce of his labours to the public place, and 
those who desire to barter their produce for it do 
not happen to arrive exactly at the same time, 
would he not lose his time, and the profit of it, if 
he were to sit in the market waiting for them ? 
Assuredly. But, there are persons who, per- 
ceiving this, will take upon themselves the arrange- 
ment between the buyer and the seller. In con- 
stituted civil societies, those who are employed on 
this service, ought to be the infirm, and unable to 
perform any other ; but, exchanging on one hand 
for money, what any person comes to sell, and 
giving the articles thus bought for a similar equi- 
valent to those who might wish to buy. 



11. — Description of 
goods of the world. 



a frugal enjoyment of the 



other furniture. They must have scarce oint- 
ments and perfumes, women, and a thousand 
superfluities of the same character. The things 
| which we mentioned as sufficient, houses, and 
clothes, and food, are not enough. Painting and 
mosaic- work must be cultivated, and works in gold 
and ivory. The society must be enlarged in con- 
sequence. This city, which is of a healthy pro- 
portion, will not suffice, but it must be replenished 
with a multitude of persons, whose occupations 
are by no means indispensable. Huntsmen and 
mimics, persons whose occupation it is to arrange 
forms and colours, persons whose trade is the cul- 
tivation of the more delicate arts, poets and their 
ministers, rhapsodists, actors, dancers, manufac- 
turers of all kinds of instruments and schemes of 
female dress, and an immense crowd of other 
ministers to pleasure and necessity. Do you not 
think we should want schoolmasters, tutors, nurses, 
hair-dressers, barbers, manufacturers and cooks ? 
Should we not want pig-drivers, which were not 
wanted in our more modest city, in this one, and a 
multitude of others to administer to other animals, 
which would then become necessary articles of 
food, — or should we not ? — Certainly we should. — 
Should we not want physicians much more, living 
in this manner than before ? The same tract of 
country would no longer provide sustenance for the 
state. Must we then not usurp from the territory 
of our neighbours, and then we should make ag- 
gressions, and so we have discovered the origin of 
war ; which is the principal cause of the greatest 
public and private calamities. — C. xi. 



in. — But with this system of life some are not 
contented. They must have beds and tables, and 



iv. — And first, we must improve upon the com- 
posers of fabulous histories in verse, to compose 
them according to the rules of moral beauty ; and 
those not composed according to the rules must be 
rejected ; and we must persuade mothers and 
nurses to teach those which we approve to their 
children, and to form their minds by moral fables, 
far more than their bodies by their hands. — Lib. ii. 



V. — ON THE DANGER OF THE STUDY OF ALLEGORICAL 
COMPOSITION (IN A LARGE SENSE) FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 

For a young person is not competent to judge 
what portions of a fabulous composition are alle- 
gorical and what literal ; but the opinions produced 



76 



FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 



by a literal acceptation of that which has no 
meaning, or ■ bad one, except in an allegorical 
sense, are often irradicable. — Lib. ii. 



vi. — God then, since he is good, cannot be, as is 
vulgarly supposed, the cause of all tilings ; he is 
the cense, indeed, of very few things. Among the 
great variety of events which happen in the course 
of human affairs, evil prodigiously overbalances 
good in everything which regards men. Of all 
that is good there can be no other cause than God ; 
but some other cause ought to be discovered for 
evil, which should never be imputed as an effect to 
God.— L. ii. 



vii. — Plato's doctrine of punishment as laid 
down, p. 146, is refuted by his previous reasonings. 
—P. 26. 

VIII. — THE UNCHANGEABLE NATURE OF GOD. 

Do you think that God is like a vulgar conjuror, 
and that he is capable for the sake of effect, of 
assuming, at one time, one form, and at another 
time, another ? Now, in his own character, con- 
verting his proper form into a multitude of shapes, 
now deceiving us, and offering vain images of him- 
self to our imagination ? Or do you think that God 
is single and one, and least of all things capable of 
departing from his permanent nature and appear- 



IX. — THE PERMANENCY OF WHAT IS EXCELLENT. 

But everything, in proportion as it is excellent, 
either in art or nature, or in both, is least suscep- 
tible of receiving change from any external influ- 



X. AGAINST SUPERSTITIOUS TALES. 

Nor should mothers terrify their children by 
these fables, that Gods go about in the night-time, 
resembling strangers, in all sorts of forms : at once 
blaspheming the Gods, and rendering their children 
cowardly. 

XI. — THE TRUE ESSENCE OF FALSEHOOD AND ITS 
ORIGIN. 

Know you not, that that which is truly false, if 
it may be permitted me so to speak, all, both Gods 
and men, detest ? — How do you mean ? — Thus : 
No person is willing to falsify in matters of the 
highest concern to himself concerning those 
matters, but fears, above all things, lest he should 
accept falsehood. — Yet, I understand you not. — 
You think that I mean something profound. I say 
that no person is willing in his own mind to receive 
or to assert a falsehood, to be ignorant, to be in 



error, to possess that which is not true. This is 
truly to be called falsehood, this ignorance and 
error in the mind itself. What is usually called 
falsehood, or deceit in words, is but a voluntary 
imitation of what the mind itself suffers in the in- 
voluntary possession of that falsehood, an image of 
later birth, and scarcely, in a strict and complete 
sense, deserving the name of falsehood. — Lib. ii. 



XII. — AGAINST A BELIEF IN HELL. 

If they are to possess courage, are not those 
doctrines alone to be taught, which render death 
least terrible ? Or do you conceive that any man 
can be brave who is subjected to a fear of death ? 
that he who believes the things that are related of 
hell, and thinks that they are truth, will prefer in 
battle, death to slavery, or defeat? — Lib. v\. — 
Tlien follows a criticism on the poetical accounts of 



XIII. — ON GRIEF. 

We must then abolish the custom of lamenting 
and commiserating the deaths of illustrious men. 
Do we assert that an excellent man will consider it 
anything dreadful that his intimate friend, who is 
also an excellent man, should die ? — By no means, 
(an excessive refinement). He will abstain then 
from lamenting over his loss, as if he had suffered 
some great evil ?-*-Surely. — May we not assert in 
addition, that such a person as we have described 
suffices to himself for all purposes of living well and 
happily, and in no manner needs the assistance or 
society of another ? that he would endure with re- 
signation the destitution of a son, or a brother, or 
possessions, or whatever external adjuncts of life 
might have been attached to him ? and that, on the 
occurrence of such contingencies, he would support 
them with moderation and mildness, by no means 
bursting into lamentations, or resigning himself to 
despondence ? — Lib. iii. 

Then he proceeds to allege passages of the poets in 
which opposite examples were held up to approbation 
and imitation. 

XIV. — THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY CONSTANT IMITATION. 

Do you not apprehend that imitations, if they 
shall have been practised and persevered in from 
early youth, become established in the habits and 
nature, in the gestures of the body, and the tones 
of the voice, and lastly, in the intellect itself? — 
C. iii. 

XV. ON THE EFFECT OF BAD TASTE IN ART. 

Nor must we restrict the poets alone to an 
exhibition of the example of virtuous manners in 
their compositions, but all other artists must be 



FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 



71 



forbidden, eithei* in sculpture, or painting, or archi- 
tecture, to employ their skill upon forms of an 
immoral, unchastcncd, monstrous, or illiberal type, 
either in the forms of living beings, or in archi- 
tectural arrangements. And the artist capable of 
this employment of his art, must not be suffered 
in our community, lest those destined to be 
guardians of the society, nourished upon images of 
deformity and vice, like cattle upon bad grass, 
gradually gathering and depasturing every day a 
little, may ignorantly establish one great evil, com- 
posed of these many evil things, in their minds. — 
—Chi. 

The monstrous figures called Arabesques, however 
in some of them is to be found a mixture of a timer 
and simpler taste, which are found in- the ruined 
palaces of the Roman Emperors, bear, nevertheless, 
the same relation to the brutal profligacy and killing 
luxury which required them, as the majestic figures 
of Castor and Pollux, and the simple beauty of the 
sculpture of the frieze of the Parthenon, bear to the 
more beautiful and simple manners of the Greeks of 
that period. With a liberal interpretation, a similar 
analogy might oe extended into literary composition. 



XVI. — AGAINST THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 

What better evidence can you require of a cor- 
rupt and pernicious system of discipline in a state, 
than that not merely persons of base habits and 
plebeian employments, but men who pretend to 
have received a liberal education, require the 
assistance of lawyers and physicians, and those 
too who have attained to a singular degree (so 
desperate are these diseases of body and mind) 
of skill. Do you not consider it an abject ne- 
cessity, a proof of the deepest degradation, to need 
to be instructed in what is just or what is needful, 
as by a master and a judge, with regard to your 
personal knowledge and suffering ? 

What would Plato have said to a priest, such as 
his office is, in modern times ? — C. hi. 



XVII. — ON MEDTCINE. 

Do you not think it an abject thing to require 
the assistance of the medicinal art, not for the 
cure of wounds, or such external diseases as result 
from the accidents of the seasons (eTrt)Teinv), but 
on account of sloth and the superfluous indul- 
gences which we have already condemned ; thus 
being filled with wind and water, like holes in 
earth, and compelling the elegant successors of 
iEsculapius to invent new names, flatulences, and 
catarrhs, &c, for the new diseases which are the 
progeny of your luxury and sloth % — L. iii. 



XVIII. — THE EFFECT OF THE DIETETIC SYSTEM. 

Herodicus being paedotribe (TratSoTpifiris, Ma~ 
gister palaestra:), and his health becoming weak, 
united tho gymnastic with the medical art, and 
having condemned himself to a life of weariness, 
afterwards extended the same pernicious system 
to others. He made his life a long death. For 
humouring the disease, mortal in its own nature, 
to which he was subject, without being able to 
cure it, he postponed all other purposes to the 
care of medicating himself, and through his whole 
life was subject to an access of his malady, if he 
departed in any degree from his accustomed diet, 
and by the employment of this skill, dying by 
degrees, he arrived at an old age. — L. iii. 

iEsculapius never pursued these systems, nor 
Machaon or Podalirius. They never undertook 
the treatment of those whose frames were in- 
wardly and thoroughly diseased, so to prolong a 
worthless existence, and bestow on a man a long 
and wretched being, during which they might 
generate children in every respect the inheritors 
of their infirmity. — L. hi. 



XIX. AGAINST WHAT IS FALSELY CALLED « KNOW- 
LEDGE OF THE WORLD." 

A man ought not to be a good judge until he 
be old ; because he ought not to have acquired a 
knowledge of what injustice is, until his under- 
standing has arrived at maturity : not apprehend- 
ing its nature from a consideration of its existence 
in himself; but having contemplated it distinct 
from his own nature in that of others, for a long 
time, until he shall perceive what an evil it is, not 
from his own experience and its effects within 
himself, but from his observations of them as 
resulting in others. Such a one were indeed an 
honourable judge, and a good ; for he who has a 
good mind, is good. But that judge who is con- 
sidered so wise, who having himself committed 
great injustices, is supposed to be qualified for the 
detection of it in others, and who is quick to sus- 
pect, appears keen, indeed, as long as he associates 
with those who resemble him ; because, deriving 
experience from the example afforded by a consi- 
deration of his own conduct and character, he acts 
with caution ; but when he associates with men of 
universal experience and real virtue, he exposes 
the defects resulting from such experience as he 
possesses, by distrusting men unreasonably and 
mistaking true virtue, having no example of it 
within himself with which to compare the appear- 
ances manifested in others ; yet, such a one finding 
more associates who are virtuous than such as are 
wise, necessarily appears, both to himself and others, 



to 



ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO. 



rather to he wise than foolish. Bat we ought 
rather to search for i wiae and good judge ; one 

who has examples within himself of that upon 

which he is to pronounce.— C. iii. 



xx. — Those who uso gymnastics unmingled 
with music become too savage, whilst those who 
use music unmingled with gymnastics, become 
more delicate than is befitting. 



ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO. 



[It is well known that when Socrates was condemned to death, his friends made arrangements for his escape from 
prison and his after security; of which he refused to avail himself, from the reason, that a good citizen ought to 
obey the laws of his country. On this Shelley makes the following remarks—] 



The reply is simple. 

Indeed, your city cannot subsist, because the 
laws are no longer of avail. For how can the laws 
be said to exist, when those who deserve to be 
nourished in the Prytanea at the public expense, 
are condemned to suffer the penalties only due to 
the most atrocious criminals ; whilst those against, 
and to protect from whose injustice, the laws were 
framed, live in honour and security ? I neither 
overthrow your state, nor infringe your laws. 
Although you have inflicted an injustice on me, 
which is sufficient, according to the opinions of the 
multitude, to authorise me to consider you and 
me as in a state of warfare ; yet, had I the power, 
so far from inflicting any revenge, I would endea- 
vour to overcome you by benefits. All that I do 



at present is, that which the peaceful traveller 
would do, who, caught by robbers in a forest, 
escapes from them whilst they are engaged in the 
division of the spoil. And this I do, when it would 
not only be indifferent, but delightful to me to die, 
surrounded by my friends, secure of the inheritance 
of glory, and escaping, after such a life as mine, 
from the decay of mind and body which must soon 
begin to be my portion should I live. But, I prefer 
the good, which I have it in my power yet to 
perform. 

Such are the arguments, which overturn the 
sophism placed in the mouth of Socrates by Plato. 
But there are others which prove that he did well 
to die. 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR 



THROUGH A PART OK 



FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, GERMANY, AND 
HOLLAND; 

WITH LETTERS, DESCRIPTIVE OF A SAIL ROUND THE LAKE OF GENEVA, 
AND OF THE GLACIERS OF CHAMOUNI. 



PREFACE. 

Nothing can be more unpresuming than this 
little volume. It contains the account of some 
desultory visits by a party of young people to 
scenes which are now so familiar to our country- 
men, that few facts relating to them can be 
expected to have escaped the many more experi- 
enced and exact observers, who have sent then' 
journals to the press. In fact, they have done 
little else than arrange the few materials which an 
imperfect journal, and two or three letters to their 
friends in England afforded. They regret, since 
then* little History is to be offered to the public, 
that these materials were not more copious and 
complete. This is a just topic of censure to those 
who are less inclined to be amused than to con- 
demn. Those whose youth has been past as theirs 
(with what success it imports not) in pursuing, 
like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight 



and beauty which invests this visible world, wil 
perhaps find some entertainment in following the 
author, with her husband and friend, on foot, 
through part of France and Switzerland, and in 
sailing with her down the castled Rhine, through 
scenes beautiful in themselves, but which, since she 
visited them, a great poet has clothed with the 
freshness of a diviner nature. They will be inter- 
ested to hear of one who has visited Meillerie, and 
Clarens, and Chillon, and Vevai — classic ground, 
peopled with tender and glorious imaginations of 
the present and the past. 

They have perhaps never talked with one who 
has beheld, in the enthusiasm of youth, the glaciers, 
and the lakes, and the forests, and the fountains of 
the mighty Alps. Such will perhaps forgive the 
imperfections of their narrative for the sympathy 
which the adventures and feelings which it re- 
counts, and a curiosity respecting scenes already 
rendered interesting and illustrious, may excite. 



JOURNAL. 



It is now nearly three years since this journey 
took place, and the journal I then kept was not 
very copious ; but I have so often talked over the 
incidents that befel us, and attempted to describe 
the scenery through which we passed, that I think 
few occurrences of any interest will be omitted. 

We left London, July 28th, 1814, on a hotter 
day than has been known in this climate for many 
years. I am not a good traveller, and this heat 



agreed very ill with me, till, on arriving at Dover, 
I was refreshed by a sea-bath. As we very much 
wished to cross the Channel with all possible speed, 
we would not wait for the packet of the following 
day (it being then about four in the afternoon) but 
hiring a small boat, resolved to make the passage 
the same evening, the seamen promising us a voyage 
of two hours. 

The evening was most beautiful ; there was but 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



little wind, ami the sails Happed in the flagging 

: the moon rose, and night came on, and 

with the night a slow, heavy swell, and a fresh 

which soon produced B sea so violent as to 
toss the boat very much. I was dreadfully sea- 
sick, and as is usually my custom when thus 
affected, I slept during the greater part of the 
night, awaking only from time to time to ask where 
We were, and to receive the dismal answer each 
tune — * Not quite half way." 

The wind was violent and contrary ; if we could 
not reach Calais, the sailors proposed making for 
Boulogne. They promised only two hours' sail 



from shore, yet hour after hour passed, and we 
were still tar distant, when the moon sunk in the 
red and stormy horizon, and the fast-flashing 
lightning became pale in the breaking day. 

We were proceeding slowly against the wind, 
when suddenly a thunder-squall struck the sail, 
and the waves rushed into the boat : even the 
sailors acknowledged that our situation was peril- 
ous ; but they succeeded in reefing the sail ; — 
the wind was now changed, and we drove before 
the gale directly to Calais. As we entered the 
harbour I awoke from a comfortless sleep, and saw 
the sun rise broad, red, and cloudless over the pier. 



FRANCE. 



Exhausted with sickness and fatigue, I walked 
over the sand with my companions to the hotel. I 
heard for the first time the confused buzz of voices 
speaking a different language from that to which I 
had been accustomed ; and saw a costume very 
unlike that worn on the opposite side of the Chan- 
nel ; the women with high caps and short jackets ; 
the men with ear-rings ; ladies walking about 
with high bonnets or coiffwres lodged on the top of 
the head, the hair dragged up underneath, without 
any stray curls to decorate the temples or cheeks. 
There is, however, something very pleasing in the 
manners and appearance of the people of Calais, 
that prepossesses you in their favour. A national 
reflection might occur, that when Edward III. 
took Calais, he turned out the old inhabitants, and 
peopled it almost entirely with our own country- 
men ; but, unfortunately, the manners are not 
English. 

We remained during that day and the greater 
part of the next at Calais : we had been obliged to 
leave our boxes the night before at the English 
custom-house, and it was arranged that they should 
go by the packet of the following day, which, 
detained by contrary wind, did not arrive until 
night. S*** and I walked among the fortifications 
on the outside of the town ; they consisted of fields 
where the hay was making. The aspect of the 
country was rural and pleasant. 

On the 30th of July, about three in the after- 
noon, we left Calais, in a cabriolet drawn by three 
horses. To persons who had never before seen 
anything but a spruce English chaise and post-boy, 
there was something irresistibly ludicrous in our 
equipage. Our cabriolet was shaped somewhat 
like a post-chaise, except that it had only two 



wheels, and consequently there were no doors at 
the sides ; the front was let down to admit the 
passengers. The three horses were placed abreast, 
the tallest in the middle, who was rendered more 
formidable by the addition of an unintelligible 
article of harness, resembling a pair of wooden 
wings fastened to his shoulders ; the harness was 
of rope ; and the postilion, a queer, upright little 
fellow with a long pigtail, craqueed his whip, and 
clattered on, while an old forlorn shepherd with a 
cocked hat gazed on us as we passed. 

The roads are excellent, but the heat was in- 
tense, and I suffered greatly from it. We slept at 
Boulogne the first night, where there was an ugly 
but remarkably good-tempered femme-de-c7iambre. 
This made us, for the first time, remark the differ- 
ence which exists between this class of persons in 
France and in England. In the latter country 
they are prudish, and if they become in the least 
degree familiar, they are impudent. The lowei 
orders in France have the easiness and politeness 
of the most well-bred English ; they treat you 
unaffectedly as their equal, and consequently there 
is no scope for insolence. 

We had ordered horses to be ready during the 
night, but we were too fatigued to make use of 
them. The man insisted on being paid for the 
whole post. Ah/ madame, said the femme-de- 
chanibre, pensez-y ; c'est pour dedommager les 
pauvres cTievaux d'avoir perdu lew doux sommeil. 
A joke from an English chambermaid would have 
been quite another thing. 

The first appearance that struck our English 
eyes was the want of enclosures ; but the fields 
were flourishing with a plentiful harvest. We 
observed no vines on this side Paris. 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



8] 



The weather still continued very hot, and tra- 
velling produced a very bad effect upon my 
health ; my companions were induced by this cir- 
cumstance to hasten the journey as much as pos- 
sible ; and accordingly we did not rest the following 
night, and the next day, about two, arrived in 
Paris. 

In this city there are no hotels where you can 
reside as long or as short a time as you please, and 
we were obliged to engage apartments at an hotel 
for a week. They were dear, and not very plea- 
sant. As usual, in France, the principal apartment 
was a bed-chamber ; there was another closet with 
a bed, and an ante-chamber, which we used as a 
sitting-room. 

The heat of the weather was excessive, so that 
we were unable to walk except in the afternoon. 
On the first evening we walked to the gardens of 
the Tuileries ; they are formal and uninteresting, 
in the French fashion, the trees cut into shapes, 
and without any grass. I think the Boulevards 
infinitely more pleasant. This street nearly sur- 
rounds Paris, and is eight miles in extent ; it is 
very wide, and planted on either side with trees. 
At one end is a superb cascade which refreshes the 
senses by its continual splashing : near this stands 
the gate of St. Denis, a beautiful piece of sculp- 
ture. I do not know how it may at present be 
disfigured by the Gothic barbarism of the con- 
querors of France, who were not contented with 
retaking the spoils of Napoleon, but, with impotent 
malice, destroyed the monuments of their own 
defeat. When I saw this gatej it w r as in its splen- 
dour, and made you imagine that the days of 
Roman greatness were transported to Paris. 

After remaining a week in Paris, we received a 
small remittance that set us free from a kind of 
imprisonment there, which we found very irksome. 
But how should we proceed ? After talking over 
and rejecting many plans, we fixed on one eccen- 
tric enough, but which, from its romance, was very 
pleasing to us. In England we could not have put 
it in execution without sustaining continual insult 
and impertinence ; the French are far more tolerant 
of the vagaries of their neighbours. We resolved 
to walk through France ; but as I was too weak 

for any considerable distance, and as C could 

not be supposed to be able to walk as far as S 

each day, we determined to purchase an ass, to 
carry our portmanteau and one of us by turns. 

Early, therefore, on Monday, August 8th, S 

and C went to the ass market, and purchased 

an ass, and the rest of the day, untU four in the 
afternoon, was spent in preparations for our depar- 
ture ; during which, Madame Photesse paid us a 
visit, and attempted to dissuade us from our 



design. She represented to us that a large army 
had been recently disbanded, that the soldiers and 
officers wandered idle about the country, and that 
t<$ (/amis servient oertmnemeni enleveea. But we 

were proof against her arguments, and packing up 
a few necessaries, leaving the rest to go by the 
diligence, we dqiarted in a fiacre from the door of 
the hotel, our little ass following. 

We dismissed the coach at the barrier. It was 
dusk, and the ass seemed totally unable to bear one 
of us, appearing to sink under the portmanteau, 
although it was small and light. We were, how- 
ever, merry enough, and thought the leagues short. 
We arrived at Charcnton about ten. 

Charenton is prettily situated in a valley, through 
which the Seine flows, w r inding among banks 
variegated with trees. On looking at this scene, 

C exclaimed, " Oh ! this is beautiful enough ; 

let us five here." This was her exclamation on 
every new scene, and as each surpassed the one 
before, she cried, " I am glad we did not stay at 
Charenton, but let us live here." 

Finding our ass useless, we sold it before we 
proceeded on our journey, and bought a mule for 
ten napoleons. About nine o'clock we departed. 
We were clad hi black silk. I rode on the mule, 

which carried also our portmanteau ; S and 

C followed, bringing a small basket of pro- 
visions. At about one we arrived at Gros-Bois, 
where, under the shade of trees, we ate our bread 
and fruit, and drank our wine, thinking of Don 
Quixote and Sancho. 

The country through which we passed was 
highly cultivated, but uninteresting ; the horizon 
scarcely ever extended beyond the circumference 
of a few fields, bright and waving with the golden 
harvest. We met several travellers ; but our 
mode, although novel, did not appear to excite any 
curiosity or remark. This night we slept at 
Guignes, in the same room and beds in which 
Napoleon and some of his generals had rested 
during the late war. The little old woman of the 
place was highly gratified in having this little story 
to tell, and spoke in warm praise of the Empress 
Josephine and Marie Louise, who had at different 
times passed on that road. 

As we continued our route, Provins was the 
first place that struck us with interest. It was our 
stage of rest for the night ; we approached it at 
sunset. After having gained the summit of a hill, 
the prospect of the town opened upon us as it lay 
in the valley below ; a rocky hill rose abruptly on 
one side, on the top of which stood a ruined 
citadel, with extensive walls and towers ; lower 
down, but beyond, was the cathedral, and the 
whole formed a scene for painting. After having 






HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



travelled for two days through a country perfectly I 

without interest, it «m a delicious relief for the eye 

to dwell again on aome irregularities and beauty of 

oountry. Our Due at Pr o v in a was ooane,and our 

- uncomfortable, but the remembrance of this 

•t made us contented and happy. 

We now approached aoenea that reminded us of 

what wo had nearly forgotten, that France had 
lafc ly been the country in which great and ex- 
traordinary events had taken place. Nogent, B 
town we entered ahout noon the following day, had 
D entirely desolated by the Cossaes. Nothing 



could bo more entire than the ruin which these 
barbarians had spread as they advanced ; perhaps 
they remembered Moscow and the destruction of 
the Russian villages ; but we were now in France, 
and the distress of the inhabitants, whose houses 
had been burned, their cattle killed, and all their 
wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detesta- 
tion of war, which none can feel who have not 
travelled through a country pillaged and wasted by 
this plague, which, in his pride, man inflicts upon 
bis fellow. 

We quitted the great route soon after we had 
left Nogent, to strike across the country to Troyes. 
About six in the evening we arrived at St.-Aubin, 
a lovely village embosomed in trees ; but, on a 
nearer view, we found the cottages roofless, the 
rafters black, and the walls dilapidated ; — a few- 
inhabitants remained. We asked for milk — they 
had none to give ; all their cows had been taken 
by the Cossaes. We had still some leagues to travel 
that night, but we found that they were not post 
leagues, but the measurement of the inhabitants, 
and nearly double the distance. The road lay 
over a desert plain, and, as night advanced, we 
were often in danger of losing the track of wheels, 
which was our only guide. Night closed in, and 
we suddenly lost all trace of the road ; but a few 
trees, indistinctly seen, seemed to indicate the 
position of a village. About ten we arrived at 
Trois-Maisons, where, after a supper on milk and 
sour bread, we retired to rest on wretched beds : 
but sleep is seldom denied, except to the indolent ; 
and after the day's fatigue, although my bed was 
nothing more than a sheet spread upon straw, I 
slept soundly until the morning was considerably 
advanced. 

S had hurt his ankle so considerably the 

preceding evening, that he was obliged, during the 
whole of the following day's journey, to ride on 
our mule. Nothing could be more barren and 
wretched than the tract through which we now- 
passed ; the ground was chalky and uncovered 
even by grass, and where there had been any 
attempts made towards cultivation, the straggling 



of corn discovered more plainly the- barren 
nature of the soil. Thousands of insects which 
were of the same white colour as the road, infested 
our path ; the sky was cloudless, and the sun 
darted its rays upon us, reflected back by the 
earth, until 1 nearly fainted under the heat. A 
village appeared at a distance, cheering us with a 
prospect of rest. It gave us new strength to pro- 
ceed ; but it was a wretched place, and afforded 
us but little relief. It had been once Large and 
populous, but now the houses were roofless, and 
the ruins that lay scattered about, the gardens 
covered with the white dust of the torn cottages, 
the black burnt beams, and squalid looks of the 
inhabitants, presented in every direction the me- 
lancholy aspect of devastation. One house, a 
cabaret, alone remained ; we were here offered 
plenty of milk, stinking bacon, sour bread, and 
a few vegetables, which we were to dress for 
ourselves. 

As we prepared our dinner in a place so filthy, 
that the sight of it alone was sufficient to destroy 
our appetite, the people of the village collected 
around us, squalid with dirt, their countenances 
expressing everything that is disgusting and brutal. 
They seemed, indeed, entirely detached from the 
rest of the world, and ignorant of all that was 
passing in it. There is much less communication 
between the various towns of France than in Eng- 
land. The use of passports may easily account for 
tins : these people did not know that Napoleon 
was deposed ; and when we asked why they did 
not rebuild their cottages, they replied, that they 
were afraid that the Cossaes would destroy them 
again upon their return. Echemine (the name of 
this village) is in every respect the most disgusting 
place I ever met with. 

Two leagues beyond, on the same road, we came 
to the village of Pavilion, — so unlike Echemine, 
that we might have fancied ourselves in another 
quarter of the globe ; here everything denoted 
cleanliness and hospitality ; many of the cottages 
w^ere destroyed, but the inhabitants were employed 
in repairing them. What could occasion so great 
a difference ? 

Still our road lay over this tract of uncultivated 
country, and our eyes w-ere fatigued by observing 
nothing but a white expanse of ground, where no 
bramble or stunted shrub adorned its barrenness. 
Towards evening we reached a small plantation of 
vines : it appeared like one of those islands of ver- 
dure that are met with in the midst of the sands 

of Libya, but the grapes were not yet ripe. S 

was totally incapable of walking, and C and I 

were very tired before we arrived at Troyes. 

We rested here for the night, and devoted the 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



83 



followiDg day to a consideration of the manner in 
which we should proceed. S 's sprain ren- 
dered our pedestrianism impossible. We accord- 
ingly sold our mule, and bought an open voiture, 
that went on four wheels, for live napoleons, and 
hired a man with a mule, for eight more, to convey 
us to Neufchatel in six days. 

The suburbs of Troyes were destroyed, and the 
town itself dirty and uninviting. I remained at the 

inn writing letters, wliile S and C arranged 

tins bargain and visited the cathedral of the town ; 
and the next morning we departed in our voiture 
for Neufchatel. A curious instance of French 
vanity occurred on leaving this town. Our voituricr 
pointed to the plain around, and mentioned, that 
it had been the scene of a battle between the Rus- 
sians and the French. "In which the Russians 
gained the victory ?" — " Ah no, madame," replied 
the man, " the French are never beaten." — " But 
how was it then," we asked, " that the Russians 
had entered Troyes soon after?" — "Oh, after 
having been defeated, they took a circuitous route, 
and thus entered the town." 

Vandeuvres is a pleasant town, at which we 
rested during the hours of noon. We walked in 
the grounds of a nobleman, laid out in the English 
taste, and terminated in a pretty wood ; it was a 
scene that reminded us of our native country. As 
we left Vandeuvres the aspect of the country 
suddenly changed ; abrupt hills, covered with vine- 
yards, intermixed with trees, inclosed a narrow 
valley, the channel of the Aube. The view was 
interspersed by green meadows, groves of poplar 
and white willow, and spires of village churches, 
which the Cossacs had yet spared. Many villages, 
ruined by the war, occupied the most romantic 
spots. 

In the evening we arrived at Bar-sur-Aube, a 
beautiful town, placed at the opening of the vale 
where the lulls terminate abruptly. We climbed 
the highest of these, but scarce had we reached the 
top, when a mist descended upon everything, and 
the rain began to fall : we were wet through before 
we could reach our inn. It was evening, and the 
laden clouds made the darkness almost as deep as 
that of midnight ; but in the west an unusually 
brilliant and fiery redness occupied an opening in 
the vapours, and added to the interest of our little 
expedition : the cottage fights were reflected in the 
tranquil river, and the dark hills behind, dimly 
seen, resembled vast and frowning mountains. 

As we quitted Bar-sur-Aube, we at the same 
time bade a short farewell to hills. Passing through 
the towns of Chaumont, Langres, (which was situ- 
ated on a hill, and surrounded by ancient fortifi- 
cations), Champlitte, and Gray, we travelled for 



nearly three days through plains, where the eountry 
gently undulated, and relieved the eye from a per- 
petual flat, without exciting any peculiar int< 
Gentle rivers, their banks ornamented by a few 
trees, stole through these plains, and a thousand 
beautiful summer insects skimmed over the str< 
The third day was a day of rain, and the first that 
had taken place during our journey. We were 
soon wet through, and were glad to stop at a little 
inn to dry ourselves. The reception we received 
here was very unprepossessing, the people still 
kept their seats round the fire, and seemed very 
unwilling to make way for the dripping guests. In 
the afternoon, however, the weather became fine, 
and at about six in the evening we entered 
Besancon. 

Hills had appeared in the distance during the 
whole day, and we had advanced gradually towards 
them, but were unprepared for the scene that broke 
upon us as we passed the gate of this city. On 
quitting the walls, the road wound underneath a 
high precipice ; on the other side, the hills rose 
more gradually, and the green valley that inter- 
vened between them was watered by a pleasant 
river ; before us arose an amphitheatre of hills 
covered with vines, but irregular and rocky. The 
last gate of the town was cut through the precipi- 
tous rock that arose on one side, and in that place 
jutted into the road. 

This approach to mountain scenery filled us with 
delight ; it was otherwise with our voituricr : he 
came from the plains of Troyes, and these hills so 
utterly scared him, that he in some degree lost his 
reason. After winding through the valley, we be- 
gan to ascend the mountains which were its bound- 
ary : we left our voiture, and walked on, delighted 
with every new view that broke upon us. 

When we had ascended the hills for about a mile 
and a half, we found our voituricr at the door of a 
wretched inn, having taken the mule from the 
voiture, and obstinately determined to remain for 
the night at this miserable village of Mort. We 
could only submit, for he was deaf to all we could 
urge, and to our remonstrances only replied, Je ne 
puis plus. 

Our beds were too uncomfortable to allow a 
thought of sleeping in them : we could only pro- 
cure one room, and our hostess gave us to under- 
stand that our voituricr was to occupy the same 
apartment. It was of little consequence, as we 
had previously resolved not to enter the beds. The 
evening w r as fine, and after the rain the air was per- 
fumed by many delicious scents. We climbed to a 
rocky seat on the hill that overlooked the village, 
where we remained until sunset. The night wee 

passed by the kitchen fire in a wretched manner, 
g 2 



84 



HISTORY OV A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



striving to catch ■ few moments of sleep, which 
were denied to us. At three in the morning we 
panned our journey. 

Our road led to the summit of the lulls that 

environ Bessncon. From the top of one of these 

we saw the whole expanse of the valley filled with 
a white undulating mist, which was pierced like 

islands by the piny mountains. The sun had just 
risen, and a ray of red light lay upon the waves 
of this fluctuating vapour. To the west, opposite 
the sun, it seemed driven by the light against the 
- in immense masses of foaming cloud, until 
it became lost in the distance, mixing its tints with 
the fleecy sky. 

Our roituricr insisted on remaining two hours 
at the village of Noe, although we were unable to 
procure any dinner, and wished to go on to the 
next stage. I have already said, that the hills 
scared his senses, and he had become disobliging, 
sullen, and stupid. While he waited, we walked 
to the neighbouring wood : it was a fine forest, 
carpeted beautifully with moss, and in various 
places overhung by rocks, in whose crevices young 
pines had taken root, and spread their branches 
for shade to those below ; the noon heat was 
intense, and we were glad to shelter ourselves from 
it in the shady retreats of this lovely forest. 

On our return to the village, we found, to our 
extreme surprise, that the voiturier had departed 
nearly an hour before, leaving word that he ex- 
pected to meet us on the road. S 's sprain 

rendered him incapable of much exertion ; but 
there was no remedy, and we proceeded on foot 
to Maison-Neuve, an auberge, four miles and a 
half distant. 

At Maison-Neuve the man had left word that 
he should proceed to Pontarlier, the frontier town 
of France, six leagues distant, and that, if we did 
not arrive that night, he should the next morning 



leave the roitttn at an inn, and return with the 
mole to Troyes. We were astonished at the im- 
pudence of this message, hut the boy of the inn 
comforted us by saying, that by going on a horse 
by a cross-road, where the voiture could not ven- 
ture, he could easily overtake and intercept the 
roituricr, and accordingly we despatched him, 
walking slowly after. We waited at the next inn 
for dinner, and in about two hours the boy re- 
turned. The man promised to wait for us at an 

auberge two leagues further on. S 5 s ankle 

had become very painful, but we could procure no 
conveyance, and as the sun was neaidy setting, we 
were obliged to hasten on. The evening was most 
beautiful, and the scenery lovely enough to beguile 
us of our fatigue : the horned moon hung in the 
fight of sunset, that threw a glow of unusual depth 
of redness over the piny mountains and the dark 
deep valleys which they inclosed ; at intervals in 
the woods were beautiful lawns interspersed with 
picturesque clumps of trees, and dark pines over- 
shadowed our road. 

In about two hours we arrived at the promised 
termination of our journey. We found, according 
to our expectation, that M. le Voiturier had pur- 
sued his journey with the utmost speed. We were 
enabled, however, to procure here a rude kind of 

cart, S being unable to walk. The moon 

became yellow, and hung low, close to the woody 
horizon. Every now and then sleep overcame me, 
but our vehicle was too rude and rough to permit 
its indulgence. I looked on the stars — and the 
constellations seemed to weave a wild dance, as 
the visions of slumber invaded the domains of 
reality. In this manner we arrived late at Pon- 
tarlier, where we found our driver, who blun- 
dered out many falsehoods for excuses ; and thus 
ended the adventures of that day. 



SWITZERLAND. 



On passing the French barrier, a surprising 
difference may be observed between the opposite 
nations that inhabit either side. The Swiss cot- 
tages are much cleaner and neater, and the in- 
habitants exhibit the same contrast. The Swiss 
women wear a great deal of white linen, and their 
whole dress is always perfectly clean. This superior 
cleanliness is chiefly produced by the difference of 
religion : travellers in Germany remark the same 



contrast between the protestant and catholic towns, 
although they be but a few leagues separate. 

The scenery of this day's journey was divine, 
exhibiting piny mountains, barren rocks, and spots 
of verdure surpassing imagination. After descend- 
ing for nearly a league between lofty cliffs, covered 
with pines, and interspersed with green glades, 
where the grass is short, and soft, and beautifully 
verdant, we arrived at the village of St. Sulpice. 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



The mule had latterly become very lame, and the 

man so disobliging, that we determined to engage 
a horse for the remainder of the way. Our voir 
turkr had anticipated us ; without, in the least, 
intimating his intention to us, he had determined to 
leave us at this village, and taken measures to that 
effect. The man we now engaged was a Sw 
cottager of the better class, who was proud of his 
mountains and his country. Pointing to the glades 
that were interspersed among the woods, he in- 
formed us that they were very beautiful, and were 
excellent pasture ; that the cows thrived there, 
and consequently produced excellent milk, from 
which the best cheese and butter hi the world 
were made. 

The mountains after St. Sulpice became loftier 
and more beautiful. We passed through a narrow 
valley between two ranges of mountains, clothed 
with forests, at the bottom of which flowed a river, 
from whose narrow bed on either side the boundaries 
of the vale arose precipitously. The road lay about 
lialf way up the mountain, which formed one of 
the sides, and we saw the overhanging rocks above 
us, and below, enormous pines, and the river, 
not to be perceived but from its reflection of the 
light of heaven, far beneath. The mountains of 
this beautiful ravine are so little asunder, that in 
time of war with France an iron chain is thrown 
across it. Two leagues from Neufchatel we saw 
the Alps : range after range of black mountains 
are seen extending one before the other, and far 
behind all, towering above every feature of the scene, 
the snowy Alps. They were a hundred miles 
distant, but reach so high in the heavens that they 
look like those accumulated clouds of dazzling 
white that arrange themselves on the horizon 
during summer. Their immensity staggers the 
imagination, and so far surpasses all conception, 
that it requires an effort of the understanding 
to believe that they indeed form a part of the 
earth. 

From this point we descended to Neufchatel, 
which is situated in a narrow plain, between the 
mountains and its immense lake, and presents no 
additional aspect of peculiar interest. 

We remained the following day at this town, 
occupied in a consideration of the step it would 
now be advisable for us to take. The money we 
had brought with us from Paris was nearly ex- 
hausted, but we obtained about j£38, in silver, 
upon discount, from one of the bankers of the 
city, and with this we resolved to journey towards 
the lake of Uri, and seek, in that romantic and 
interesting country, some cottage where we might 
dwell in peace and solitude. Such were our dreams, 
which we should probably have realised, had it not 



been for the deficiency of that indispensable article 
money, which obliged us to return to England. 

A Swiss, whom S met at the post-office, 

kindly interested himself in our affairs, and assisted 

us to hire a voitwre to convey us to Lucerne, the 

principal town of the lake of that name, which is 

connected with the lake of Uri. This man was 

imbued with the spirit of time politeness, and ea- 

1 deavoured to perform real services, and seemed to 

| regard the mere ceremonies of the affair as things 

| of very little value. On the 21st August, we left 

I Neufchatel ; our Swiss friend accompanied us a 

little way out of the town. The journey to Lucerne 

occupied rather more than two days. The country 

was flat and dull, and, excepting that we now and 

then caught a glimpse of the divine Alps, there was 

: nothing in it to interest us. Lucerne promised 

better things, and as soon as we arrived (August 

23d) we hired a boat, with which we proposed to 

coast the lake until we should meet with some 

suitable habitation, or perhaps, even going to 

Altorf, cross Mont St. Gothard, and seek In the 

warm climate of the country to the south of the 

Alps an air more salubrious, and a temperature 

better fitted for the precarious state of S 's 

health, than the bleak region to the north. The 
lake of Lucerne is encompassed on all sides by 
high mountains that rise abruptly from the water ; 
— sometimes their bare fronts descend perpendi- 
cularly, and cast a black shade upon the waves ; — 
sometimes they are covered with thick w r ood, whose 
dark foliage is interspersed by the brown bare 
crags on which the trees have taken root. In 
every part where a glade shows itself hi the forest 
it appears cultivated, and cottages peep from among 
the woods. The most luxuriant islands, rocky, and 
covered with moss, and bending trees, are sprinkled 
over the lake. Most of these are decorated by the 
figure of a saint in wretched wax-work. 

The direction of this lake extends at first from 
east to west, then turning a right angle, it lies 
from north to south ; this latter part is distin- 
guished in name from the other, and is called the 
lake of Uri. The former part is also nearly 
divided midway, where the jutting land almost 
meets, and its craggy sides cast a deep shadow on 
the little strait through which you pass. The 
summits of several of the mountains that inclose 
the lake to the south are covered by eternal 
glaciers ; of one of these, opposite Brunen, they 
tell the story of a priest and his mistress, who 
flying from persecution, inhabited a cottage at the 
foot of the snows. One winter night an avalanche 
overwhelmed them, but their plaintive voices are 
still heard in stormy nights, calling for succour 
from the peasants. 



B6 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



Brunen is situated on the northern side of the 
angle which the lake makes, forming the extremity 
of me lake of Lacerate, Here ire rested for the 

night, and dismissed our boatmen. Nothing could 
be more magnifioent than the view from this spot. 
The high mountains encompassed us, darkening 
the waters ; at a distance on the shores of Uri, 
we oonld perceive the chapel of Tell, and this was 
the village where he matured the conspiracy which 
was to overthrow the tyrant of his country ; and 
indeed, this lovely lake, these sublime mountains, 
and wild forests, seemed a fit cradle for a mind 
aspiring to high adventure and heroic deeds. Yet 
we saw no glimpse of his spirit in his present 
countrymen. The Swiss appeared to us then, and 
experience has confirmed our opinion, a people 
slow of comprehension and of action ; but habit 
has made them unfit for slavery, and they would, I 
have little doubt, make a brave defence against 
any invader of their freedom. 

Such were our reflections, and we remained 
until late in the evening on the shores of the lake, 
conversing, enjoying the rising breeze, and con- 
templating with feelings of exquisite delight the 
divine objects that surrounded us. 

The following day was spent in a consideration 
of our circumstances, and in contemplation of the 
scene around us. A furious vent cVItalie (south 
wind) tore up the lake, making immense waves, 
and carrying the water in a whirlwind high in 
the air, when it fell like heavy rain into the lake. 
The waves broke with a tremendous noise on 
the rocky shores. This conflict continued during 
the whole day, but it became calmer towards the 

evening. S and I walked on the banks, and 

sitting on a rude pier, S read aloud the 

account of the Siege of Jerusalem from Tacitus. 

In the meantime we endeavoured to find a habi- 
tation, but could only procure two unfurnished 
rooms in an ugly big house, called the Chateau. 
These we hired at a guinea a month, had beds 
moved into them, and the next day took pos- 
session. But it was a wretched place, with no 
comfort or convenience. It was with difficulty 
that we could get any food prepared : as it was 
cold and rainy, we ordered a fire — they lighted an 
immense stove which occupied a corner of the 
room ; it was long before it heated, and when 
hot, the warmth was so unwholesome, that we 
were obliged to throw open our windows to prevent 
a kind of suffocation ; added to this, there was but 
one person in Brunen who could speak French, a 
barbarous kind of German being the language of 
this part of Switzerland. It was with difficulty, 
therefore, that we could get our most ordinary 
wants supplied. Our amusement meanwhile was 



writing. S commenced a romance on the 

subject of the Assassins, and I wrote to his 
dictation. 

Our immediate inconveniences led us to a more 
serious consideration of our situation. At one time 
we proposed crossing Mont St. Gothard hito Italy ; 
but the £28 which we possessed, was all the 
money that we could count upon with any cer- 
tainty, until the following December. S 's 

presence in London was absolutely necessary for 
the procuring any further supply. What were we 
to do ? we should soon be reduced to absolute want. 
Thus, after balancing the various topics that 
offered themselves for discussion, we resolved to 
return to England. 

Having formed this resolution, we had not a 
moment for delay : our little store was sensibly 
decreasing, and ^28 could hardly appear suffi- 
cient for so long a journey. It had cost us sixty 
to cross France from Paris to Neufchatel ; but 
we now resolved on a more economical mode of 
travelling. Water conveyances are always the 
cheapest, and fortunately we were so situated, that 
by taking advantage of the rivers of the Reuss and 
Rhine, we could reach England without travelling 
a league on land. This was our plan ; we should 
travel eight hundred miles, and was this possible 
on so small a sum ? but there was no other alter- 
native, and indeed S only knew how very 

little we had to depend upon. 

We departed the next morning for the town of 
Lucerne. It rained violently during the first part 
of our voyage, but towards its conclusion the sky 
became clear, and the sun-beams dried and cheered 
us. We saw again, and for the last time, the 
rocky shores of this beautiful lake, its verdant 
isles, and snow-capt mountains. 

We landed at Lucerne, and remained in that 
town the following night, and the next morning 
(August 28th) departed in the diligence par eau 
for Loffenberg, a town on the Rhine, where the 
falls of that river prevented the same vessel from 
proceeding any further. Our companions in this 
voyage were of the meanest class, smoked pro- 
digiously, and were exceedingly disgusting. After 
having landed for refreshment in the middle of the 
day, we found, on our return to the boat, that our 
former seats were occupied ; we took others, when 
the original possessors angrily, and almost with 
violence, insisted upon our leaving them. Their 
brutal rudeness to us, who did not understand 

their language, provoked S to knock one of 

the foremost down : he did not return the blow, 
but continued his vociferations until the boatmen 
interfered, and provided us with other seats. 

The Reuss is exceedingly rapid, and we de- 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



87 



scended several falls, one of otore than eight feet. 
Most of the passengers landed at this point, to re- 
embark when the boat had descended into smooth 
water— the boatmen advised us to remain on 
board. There is something very delicious in the 
sensation, when at one moment you are at the top 
of a fall of water, aud before the second has ex- 
pired you are at the bottom, still rushing on with 
the impulse which the descent has given. The 
waters of the Rhone are blue, those of the Reuss 
are of a deep green. I should think that there 
must be something in the beds of these rivers, and 
that the accidents of the banks and sky cannot 
alone cause this difference. 

Sleeping at Dettingen, we arrived the next 
morning at Loffenberg, where we engaged a 
small canoe to convey us to Mumph. I give these 
boats this Indian appellation, as they were of the 
rudest construction — long, narrow, and flat- 
bottomed : they consisted merely of straight pieces 
of deal board, unpainted, and nailed together with 
so little care, that the water constantly poured in 
at the crevices, and the boat perpetually required 



emptying. The river was rapid, and sped swiftly, 
breaking as it passed on innumerable rocks just 
covered by the water : it was a sight of some dread 
to see our frail boat winding among the eddies of 
the rocks, which it was death to touch, and when 
the slightest inclination on one side would instantly 
have overset it. 

We could not procure a boat at Mumph, and we 
thought ourselves lucky in meeting with a return 
cabriolet to Rheinfelden ; but our good fortune was 
of short duration : about a league from Mumph 
the cabriolet broke down, and we were obliged to 
proceed on foot. Fortunately we were overtaken 
by some Swiss soldiers, who were discharged and 
returning home ; they carried our box for us as 
far as Rheinfelden, when we were directed to pro- 
ceed a league farther to a village where boats were 
commonly hired. Here, although not without some 
difficulty, we procured a boat for Basle, and pro- 
ceeded down a swift river, while evening came on, 
and the air was bleak and comfortless. Our 
voyage was, however, short, and we arrived at the 
place of our destination by six in the evening. 



GERMANY. 



Before we slept, S had made a bargain for 

a boat to carry us to Mayence, and the next morn- 
big, bidding adieu to Switzerland, we embarked in 
a boat laden with merchandise, but where we had 
no fellow-passengers to disturb our tranquillity by 
their vulgarity and rudeness. The wind was vio- 
lently against us, but the stream, aided by a slight 
exertion from the rowers, earried us on ; the sun 

shone pleasantly, S read aloud to us Mary 

Wollstonecraft's Letters from Norway, and we 
passed our time delightfully. 

The evening was such as to find few parallels hi 
beauty ; as it approached, the banks, which had 
hitherto been flat and uninteresting, became ex- 
ceedingly beautiful. Suddenly the river grew 
narrow, and the boat dashed with inconceivable 
rapidity round the base of a rocky hill covered 
with pines ; a ruined tower, with its desolated 
windows, stood on the summit of another hill that 
jutted into the river ; beyond, the sunset was illu- 
minating the distant mountains and clouds, casting 
the reflection of its rich and purple hues on the 
agitated river. The brilliance and conti'asts of 
the colours on the circling whirlpools of the stream, 
was an appearance entirely new and most beautiful ; 
the shades grew darker as the sun descended below 



the horizon, and after we had landed, as we walked 
to our inn round a beautiful bay, the full moon 
arose with divine splendour, casting its silver light 
on the before purpled waves. 

The following morning we pursued our journey 
in a slight canoe, in which every motion was 
accompanied with danger ; but the stream had lost 
much of its rapidity, and was no longer impeded 
by rocks ; the banks were low, and covered with 
willows. We passed Strasburgh, and the next 
morning it was proposed to us that we should 
proceed in the diligence par eau, as the navigation 
would become dangerous for our smaU boat. 

There were only four passengers besides our- 
selves, three of these were students of the Stras- 
burgh university : Schwitz, a rather handsome, 
good-tempered young man ; Hoff, a kind of shape- 
less animal, with a heavy, ugly, German face ; and 
Schneider, who was nearly an idiot, and on whom 
his companions were always playing a thousand 
tricks : the remaining passengers were a woman 
and an infant, 

The country was uninteresting, but we enjoyed 
fine weather, and slept in the boat in the open 
air without any inconvenience. We saw on the 
shores few objects that called forth our attention, 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



if I except the town of Mannheim, which was 
strikingly neat and clean. It was situated at 

about ft mile from the river, and the read to it 
; ''anted on each side with bea u tiful acacias. 
The Last part of this voyage was performed close 
under land, as the wind was so violently against 
ns, that, even with all the force of a rapid current 
in our favour, wo wore hardly permitted to pro- 
ceed. Wo wore bold (and not without reason) 
that wo ought to congratulate ourselves on having 
exchanged our canoe for this boat, as the river 
was now of considerable width, and tossed by the 
wind into large waves. The same morning a boat, 
containing fifteen persons, in attempting to cross 
the water, had upset in the middle of the river, 
and every one in it perished. We saw the boat 
turned over, floating down the stream. This was 
a melancholy sight, yet ludicrously commented on 
by the batclicr; almost the whole stock of whose 
French consisted in the word seulement. When 
we asked him what had happened, he answered, 
laying particular emphasis on this favourite dis- 
syllable, C'est seulement un bateau, qui etait seulement 
renverse, et tons les peuples sont seulement noyes. 

Mayence is one of the best fortified towns in 
Germany. The river, which is broad and rapid, 
guards it to the east, and the hills for three leagues 
around exhibit signs of fortifications. The town 
itself is old, the streets narrow, and the houses 
high : the cathedral and towers of the town still 
bear marks of the bombardment which took place 
in the revolutionary war. 

We took our place in the diligence par eau for 
Cologne, and the next morning (September 4th) 
departed. This conveyance appeared much more 
like a mercantile English affair than any we had 
before seen ; it was shaped like a steam-boat, with 
a cabin and a high deck. Most of our companions 
chose to remain in the cabin ; this was fortunate 
for us, since nothing could be more horribly dis- 
gusting than the lower order of smoking, drinking 
Germans who travelled with us ; they swaggered 
and talked, and got tipsy, and, what was hideous 
to English eyes, kissed one another ; there were, 
however, two or three merchants of a better class, 
who appeared well-informed and polite. 

The part of the Rhine, down which we now 
glided, is that so beautifully described by Lord 
Byron in his third canto of Childe Harold. We 
read these verses with delight, as they conjured 
before us these lovely scenes with truth and vivid- 
ness of painting, and with the exquisite addition of 
glowing language and a warm imagination. We 
were carried down by a dangerously rapid current, 
and saw on either side of us hills covered with 
vines and trees, craggy cliffs crowned by desolate 



towers, and wooded islands, where picturesque 
ruins peeped from behind the foliage, and cast the 
shadows of their forms on the troubled waters, 
which distorted without deforming them. We 
heard the songs of the vintagers, and if sur- 
rounded by disgusting Germans, the sight was 
not so replete with enjoyment as I now fancy it 
to have been ; yet memory, taking all the dark 
shades from the picture, presents this part of the 
Rhine to my remembrance as the loveliest para- 
dise on earth. 

We had sufficient leisure for the enjoyment of 
these scenes, for the boatmen, neither rowing nor 
steering, suffered us to be carried down by the 
stream, and the boat turned round and round as 
it descended. 

While I speak with disgust of the Germans who 
travelled with us, I should, in justice to these 
borderers, record, that at one of the inns here we 
saw the only pretty woman we met with in the 
course of our travels. She is what I should con- 
ceive to be a truly German beauty ; grey eyes, 
slightly tinged with brown, and expressive of un- 
common sweetness and frankness. She had lately 
recovered from a fever, and this added to the 
interest of her countenance, by adorning it with 
an appearance of extreme delicacy. 

On the following day we left the hills of the 
Rhine, and found that, for the remainder of our 
journey, we should move sluggishly through the 
flats of Holland : the river also winds extremely, 
so that, after calculating our resources, we resolved 
to finish our journey in a land diligence. Our 
water conveyance remained that night at Bonn, 
and that we might lose no time, we proceeded 
post the same night to Cologne, where we arrived 
late ; for the rate of travelling in Germany seldom 
exceeds a mile and a half an hour. 

Cologne appeared an immense town, as we drove 
through street after street to arrive at our inn. 
Before we slept, we secured places in the diligence, 
which was to depart next morning for Cleves. 

Nothing in the world can be more wretched 
than the travelling in this German diligence : the 
coach is clumsy and comfortless, and we proceeded 
so slowly, stopping so often, that it appeared as if 
we should never arrive at our journey's end. We 
were allowed two hours for dinner, and two more 
were wasted in the evening while the coach was 
being changed. We were then requested, as the 
diligence had a greater demand for places than it 
could supply, to proceed in a cabriolet which was 
provided for us. We readily consented, as we 
hoped to travel faster than in the heavy diligence ; 
but this was not permitted, and we jogged on all 
night behind this cumbrous machine. In the 



HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 



89 



morning wnen we stopped, wo for a moment in- 
dulged a hope that we had arrived at Clews, which 
was at the distance of five leagues from our last 
night's stage ; but we had only advanced three 
leagues in seven or eight hours, and had yet eight 
miles to perform. However, we first rested about 



three hoars at this stage, where we could not ob- 
tain breakfast or any convenience, and at about 
eight o'clock we ag-ain departed, and with slow, 
although far from easy travelling, faint with hunger 
and fatigue, we arrived by noon at Cleves. 



HOLLAND. 



Tired by the slow pace of the diligence, we 
resolved to post the remainder of the way. We 
had now, however, left Germany, and travelled at 
about the same rate as an English post-chaise. 
The country was entirely flat, and the roads so 
sandy, that the horses proceeded with difficulty. 
The only ornaments of this country are the turf 
fortifications that surround the towns. At Nime- 
guen we passed the flying bridge, mentioned in the 
letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. We 
had intended to travel all night, but at Triel, where 
we arrived at about ten o'clock, we were assured 
that no post-boy was to be found who would pro- 
ceed at so late an hour, on account of the robbers 
who infested the roads. This was an obvious 
imposition ; but as we could procure neither 
horses nor driver, we were obliged to sleep here. 

During the whole of the following day the road 
lay between canals, which intersect this country in 
every direction. The roads were excellent, but 
the Dutch have contrived as many inconveniences 
as possible. In our journey of the day before, we 
had passed by a windmill, which was so situated 
with regard to the road, that it was only by keep- 
ing close to the opposite side, and passing quickly, 
that we could avoid the sweep of its sails. 

The roads between the canals were only wide 
enough to admit of one carriage, so that when we 
encountered another we were obliged sometimes to 
back for half a mile, until we should come to one 
of the drawbridges which led to the fields, on 
which one of the cabriolets was backed, while the 
other passed. But they have another practice, 
which is still more annoying : the flax when cut is 
put to soak under the mud of the canals, and then 
placed to dry against the trees which are planted 
on either side of the road ; the stench that it 
exhales, when the beams of the sun draw out the 
moisture, is scarcely endurable. We saw many 
enormous frogs and toads in the canals ; and the 
only sight which refreshed the eye by its beauty 
was the delicious verdure of the fields, where the 



grass was as rich and green as that of England, an 
appearance not common on the Continent. 

Rotterdam is remarkably clean : the Dutch even 
wash the outside brickwork of their houses. We 
remained here one day, and met with a man in a 
very unfortunate condition : he had been born in 
Holland, and had spent so much of his life between 
England, France, and Germany, that he had ac- 
quired a slight knowledge of the language of each 
country, and spoke all very imperfectly. He said 
that he understood English best, but he was nearly 
unable to express himself in that. 

On the evening of the 8th of September we sailed 
from Rotterdam, but contrary winds obliged us to 
remain nearly two days at Marsluys, a town about 
two leagues from Rotterdam. Here our last guinea 
was expended, and we reflected with wonder that 
we had travelled eight hundred miles for less than 
thirty pounds, passing through lovely scenes, and 
enjoying the beauteous Rhine, and all the brilliant 
shows of earth and sky, perhaps more, travelling as 
we did, in an open boat, than if we had been shut 
up in a carriage, and passed on the road under the 

hills. During our stay at Marsluys, S continued 

his Romance. 

The captain of our vessel was an Englishman, 
and had been a king's pilot. The bar of the Rhine 
a little below Marsluys is so dangerous, that with- 
out a very favourable breeze, none of the Dutch 
vessels dare attempt its passage ; but although the 
wind was a very few points in our favour, our 
captain resolved to sail, and although hah repent- 
ant before he had accomplished his undertaking, 
he was glad and proud when, triumphing over the 
timorous Dutchmen, the bar was crossed, and the 
vessel safe ha the open sea. It was in truth an 
enterprise of some peril ; a heavy gale had pre- 
vailed during the night, and although it had abated 
since the morning, the breakers at the bar were 
still exceedingly high. Through some delay, which 
had arisen from the ship having got aground in 
the harbour, we arrived half an hour after the 



LETTERS TKOM GENET L 



appointed time. The breakers wore tremendous, 
and we were informed that there was the space of 
only two foot between the bottom of the vessel and 
the sands. The waves, which broke ■gainst the 
sides of the ship witli a terrible shook, were quite 
perpendicular, and even sometimes overhanging in 
the abrupt smoothness of their sides. Shoals of 



enormous porpoises were sporting with the utmost 
composure amidst the troubled waters. 

W -afely passed this danger, and after a navi- 
gation unexpectedly short, arrived at Gravesend 
on the morning of the 1 3th of September, the third 
day after our departure from Marsluys. 

M. S. 



LETTERS 



DURING A RESIDENCE OF THREE MONTHS IN THE ENVIRONS OF GENEVA, 
IN THE SUMMER OF THE YEAR 1816. 



LETTER I. 

H6tel de Skheron, Geneva, May 17, 1816. 

We arrived at Paris on the 8th of this month, 
and were detained two days for the purpose of 
obtaining the various signatures necessary to our 
passports, the French government having become 
much more circumspect since the escape of Lava- 
lette. "We had no letters of introduction, or any 
friend in that city, and were therefore confined to 
our hotel, where we were obliged to hire apart- 
ments for the week, although, when we first 
arrived, we expected to be detained one night 
only ; for in Paris there are no houses where you 
can be accommodated with apartments by the day. 

The manners of the French are interesting, 
although less attractive, at least to Englishmen, 
than before the last invasion of the Allies : the 
discontent and sullenness of their minds perpetually 
betrays itself. Nor is it wonderful that they should 
regard the subjects of a government which fills 
their country- with hostile garrisons, and sustains a 
detested dynasty on the throne, with an acrimony 
and indignation of which that government alone is 
the proper object. This feeling is honourable to 
the French, and encouraging to all those of every 
nation in Europe who have a fellow feeling with 
the oppressed, and who cherish an unconquerable 
hope that the cause of liberty must at length prevail. 

Our route after Paris, as far as Troves, lay 
through the same uninteresting tract of country 
which we had traversed on foot nearly two years 
before ; but on quitting Troyes we left the road 
leading to Neufchatel, to follow that which was to 
conduct us to Geneva. We entered Dijon on the 
third evening after our departure from Paris, and 



passing through Dole, arrived at Poligny. This 
town is built at the foot of Jura, which rises 
abruptly from a plain of vast extent. The rocks 
of the mountain overhang the houses. Some 
difficulty in procuring horses detained us here until 
the evening closed in, when we proceeded, by the 
light of a stormy moon, to Champagnolles, a little 
village situated in the depth of the mountains. 
The road was serpentine and exceedingly steep, 
and was overhung on one side by half-distinguished 
precipices, whilst the other was a gulf, filled by 
the darkness of the driving clouds. The dashing 
of the invisible streams announced to us that we 
had quitted the plains of France, as we slowly 
ascended, amidst a violent storm of wind and rain, 
to Champagnolles, where we arrived at twelve 
o'clock, the fourth night after our departure from 
Paris. 

The next morning we proceeded, still ascending 
among the ravines and valleys of the mountain. 
The scenery perpetually grows more wonderful 
and sublime : pine forests of impenetrable thick- 
ness and untrodden, nay, inaccessible expanse, 
spread on every side. Sometimes the dark woods 
descending, follow the route into the valleys, the 
distorted trees struggling with knotted roots 
between the most barren clefts ; sometimes the 
road winds high into the regions of frost, and then 
the forests become scattered, and the branches of 
the trees are loaded with snow, and half of the 
enormous pines themselves buried in the wavy 
drifts. The spring, as the inhabitants informed 
us, was unusually late, and indeed the cold was 
excessive ; as we ascended the mountains, the 
same clouds winch rained on us in the valleys 
poured forth large flakes of snow thick and fast. 






LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 



91 



The sun occasionally shone through these showers, 
and illuminated the magnificent ravines of the 
mountains, whose gigantic pines were some laden 
with snow, some wreathed round by the lines of 
scattered and lingering vapour ; others darting 
their spires into the sunny sky, brilliantly clear 
and azure. 

As the evening advanced, and we ascended 
higher, the snow which we had beheld whitening 
the overhanging rocks, now encroached upon our 
road, and it snowed fast as we entered the village 
of Les Rousses, where we were threatened by the 
apparent necessity of passing the night in a bad 
inn and dirty beds. For, from that place there 
are two roads to Geneva ; one by Nion, in the 
Swiss territory, where the mountain route is 
shorter, and comparatively easy at that time of the 
year, when the road is for several leagues covered 
with snow of an enormous depth ; the other road 
lay through Gex, and was too circuitous and dan- 
gerous to be attempted at so late an hour in the 
day. Our passport, however, was for Gex, and we 
were told that we could not change its destination ; 
but all these police laws, so severe in themselves, 
are to be softened by bribery, and this difficulty 
was at length overcome. We hired four horses, 
and ten men to support the carriage, and departed 
from Les Rousses at six in the evening, when the 
sun had already far descended, and the snow, 
pelting against the windows of our carriage, 
assisted the coming darkness to deprive us of the 
view of the lake of Geneva and the far distant Alps. 

The prospect around, however, was sufficiently 
sublime to command our attention — never was 
scene more awfully desolate. The trees in these 
regions are incredibly large, and stand in scattered 
clumps over the white wilderness ; the vast ex- 
panse of snow was chequered only by these gigantic 
pines, and the poles that marked our road : no 
river nor rock-encircled lawn relieved the eye, 
by adding the picturesque to the sublime. The 
natural silence of that uninhabited desert con- 
trasted strangely with the voices of the men who 
conducted us, who, with animated tones and 
gestures, called to one another in a patois com- 
posed of French and Italian, creating disturbance, 
where, but for them, there was none. 

To what a different scene are we now arrived ! 
To the warm sunshine, and to the humming of 
sun-loving insects. From the windows of our 
hotel we see the lovely lake, blue as the heavens 
which it reflects, and sparkling with golden beams. 
The opposite shore is sloping, and covered with 
vines, which, however, do not so early in the season 
add to the beauty of the prospect. Gentlemen's 
seats are scattered over these banks, behind which 



rise the various ridges of black mountains, and 
toweling far above, in the midst of its snowy Alps, 
the majestic Mont Blanc, highest and queen of all. 
Such is the view reflected by the lake ; it is a 
bright summer scene without any of that sacred 
solitude and deep seclusion that delighted us at 
Lucerne. 

We have not yet found out any very agreeable 
walks, but you know our attachment to water 
excursions. We have hired a boat, and every 
evening, at about six o'clock, we sail on the 
lake, which is delightful, whether we glide over a 
glassy surface or are speeded along by a strong 
wind. The waves of this lake never afflict me with 
that sickness that deprives me of all enjoyment in 
a sea voyage ; on the contrary, the tossing of our 
boat raises my spirits and inspires me with unusual 
hilarity. Twilight here is of short duration, but 
we at present enjoy the benefit of an increasing 
moon, and seldom return until ten o'clock, when, 

j as we approach the shore, we are saluted by the 
delightful scent of flowers and new-mown grass, 
and the chirp of the grasshoppers, and the song 
of the evening birds. 

We do not enter into society here, yet our 
time passes swiftly and delightfully. We read 
Latin and Italian during the heats of noon, and 
when the sun declines we walk in the garden of 
the hotel, looking at the rabbits, relieving fallen 
cockchaffers, and watching the motions of a 

I myriad of lizards, who inhabit a southern wall 
of the garden. You know that we have just 
escaped from the gloom of winter and of London ; 
and coming to this delightful spot during this 
divine weather, I feel as happy as a new-fledged 
bird, and hardly care what twig I fly to, so that 
I may try my new-found wings. A more ex- 
perienced bird may be more difficult ih its choice 
of a bower ; but, in my present temper of mind, 
the budding flowers, the fresh grass of spring, 
and the happy creatures about me that live and 
enjoy these pleasures, are quite enough to afford 
me exquisite delight, even though clouds should 
shut out Mont Blanc from my sight. Adieu ! 

M.S. 



LETTER II. 

COLIGNY GENEVA — PLAINPALAIS. 

Campagne Chapuis, near Coligny, 1st June. 
You will perceive from my date that we have 
changed our residence since my last letter. We 
now inhabit a little cottage on the opposite shore 
of the lake, and have exchanged the view of 
Mont Blanc and her snowy aiguilles for the dark 
frowning Jura, behind whose range we every 



LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 



evening see the sun sink, end darkness approaches 
our valley from behind the Alps, which ere then 
tinged by that glowing rose-like hue which is 
observed in England to attend on the elonda of 

an autumnal sky when day-light is almost gone. 
The lake is at our feet, and a. little harbour con- 
tains our boat, in which we still enjoy our 
evening excursions on the water. Unfortunately 
we do not now enjoy those brilliant skies that 
hailed us on our first arrival to this country. 
An almost perpetual rain confines us principally 
to the house ; but when the sun bursts forth it 
is with a splendour and heat unknown in England. 
The thunder storms that visit us are grander and 
more terrific than I have ever seen before. We 
watch them as they approach from the opposite 
side of the lake, observing the lightning play 
among the clouds in various parts of the heavens, 
and dart in jagged figures upon the piny heights 
of Jura, dark with the shadow of the overhanging 
cloud, while perhaps the sun is shining cheerily 
upon us. One night we enjoyed a finer storm 
than I had ever before beheld. The lake was lit up 
— the pines on Jura made visible, and all the scene 
illuminated for an instant, when a pitchy black- 
ness succeeded, and the thunder came in frightful 
bursts over our heads, amid the darkness. 

But while I still dwell on the country around 
Geneva, you will expect me to say something of 
the town itself : there is nothing, however, in it 
that can repay you for the trouble of walking over 
its rough stones. The houses are high, the streets 
narrow, many of them on the ascent, and no public 
building of any beauty to attract your eye, or any 
architecture to gratify your taste. The town is 
surrounded by a wall, the three gates of which are 
shut exactly at ten o'clock, when no bribery (as in 
France) can open them. To the south of the 
town is the promenade of the Genevese, a grassy 
plain planted with a few trees, and called Plain- 
palais. Here a small obelisk is erected to the glory 
of Rousseau, and here (such is the mutability of 
human life) the magistrates, the successors of those 
who exiled him from his native country, were shot 
by the populace, during that revolution, which his 
writings mainly contributed to mature, and which, 
notwithstanding the temporary bloodshed and 
injustice with which it was polluted, has produced 
enduring benefits to mankind, which all the chica- 
nery of statesmen, nor even the great conspiracy 
of kings, can entirely render vain. From respect 
to the memory of their predecessors, none of the 
present magistrates ever walk in Plainpalais. 
Another Sunday recreation for the citizens is an 
excursion to the top of Mont Saleve. This hill is 
within a league of the town, and rises perpendicu- 



larly from the cultivated plain. It is ascended on 
the other side, and I should judge from its situa- 
tion that your toil is rewarded by a delightful view 
of the course of the Rhone and Arve, and of the 
shores of the lake. We have not yet visited it. 

There is more equality of classes here than in 
England. This occasions a greater freedom and 
refinement of manners among the lower orders than 
we meet with in our own country. I fancy the 
haughty English ladies are greatly disgusted with 
this consequence of republican institutions, for the 
Genevese servants complain very much of their 
scolding, an exercise of the tongue, I believe, per- 
fectly unknown here. The peasants of Switzerland 
may not however emulate the vivacity and grace of 
the French. They are more cleanly, but they are 
slow and inapt. I know a girl of twenty who, 
although she had lived all her life among vineyards, 
could not inform me during what month the vintage 
took place, and I discovered she was utterly igno- 
rant of the order in which the months succeed 
one to another. She would not have been sur- 
prised if I had talked of the burning sun and deli- 
cious fruits of December, or of the frosts of July. 
Yet she is by no means deficient in understanding. 

The Genevese are also much inclined to puritan- 
ism. It is true that from habit they dance on a 
Sunday, but as soon as the French government 
was abolished in the town, the magistrates ordered 
the theatre to be closed, and measures were taken 
to pull down the building. 

We have latterly enjoyed fine weather, and 
nothing is more pleasant than to listen to the even- 
ing song of the vine-dressers. They are all women, 
and most of them have harmonious although mas- 
culine voices. The theme of their ballads consists 
of shepherds, love, flocks, and the sons of kings 
who fall in love with beautiful shepherdesses. Their 
tunes are monotonous, but it is sweet to hear them 
in the stillness of evening, while we are enjoying 
the sight of the setting sun, either from the hill 
behind our house or from the lake. 

Such are our pleasures here, which would be 
greatly increased if the season had been more 
favourable, for they chiefly consist in such enjoy- 
ments as sunshine and gentle breezes bestow. We 
have not yet made any excursion in the environs 
of the town, but we have planned several, when you 
shall hear again of us ; and we will endeavour, by 
the magic of words, to transport the ethereal part 
of you to the neighbourhood of the Alps, and 
mountain streams, and forests, which, while they 
clothe the former, darken the latter with their vast 
shadows. Adieu ! 

M.S. 



LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 



99 



LETTER III. 

To T. P. Esq. 

MEILLERIE, CLARENS, CHILLON, VEVaI, LAUSANNE. 

Montalegre, near Coligni, Geneva, July 12th. 
It is nearly a fortnight since I have returned 
from Vevai. This journey has been on every 
account delightful, but most especially, because 
then I first knew the divine beauty of Rousseau's 
imagination, as it exhibits itself in Julie. It is 
inconceivable what an enchantment the scene itself 
lends to those delineations, from which its own 
most touching charm arises. But I will give you 
an abstract of our voyage, which lasted eight days, 
and if you have a map of Switzerland, you can 
follow me. 

We left Montalegre at half-past two on the 23d 
of June. The lake was calm, and after three hours 
of rowing we arrived at Hermance, a beautiful 
little village, containing a ruined tower, built, the 
villagers say, by Julius Caesar. There were three 
other towers similar to it, which the Genevese 
destroyed for their own fortifications in 1560. We 
got into the tower by a kind of window. The 
walls are immensely solid, and the stone of which 
it is built so hard, that it yet retained the mark of 
chisels. The boatmen said, that this tower was 
once three times higher than it is now. There are 
two staircases in the thickness of the walls, one of 
which is entirely demolished, and the other half 
ruined, and only accessible by a ladder. The town 
itself, now an inconsiderable village inhabited by a 
few fishermen, was built by a queen of Burgundy, 
and reduced to its present state by the inhabitants 
of Berne, who burnt and ravaged everything they 
could find. 

Leaving Hermance, we arrived at sunset at the 
village of Nerni. After looking at our lodgings, 
which were gloomy and dirty, we walked out by 
the side of the lake. It was beautiful to see the 
vast expanse of these purple and misty waters 
broken by the craggy islets near to its slant and 
" beached margin." There were many fish sport- 
ing in the lake, and multitudes were collected close 
to the rocks to catch the flies which inhabited them. 
On returning to the village, we sat on a wall 
beside the lake, looking at some children who were 
playing at a game like ninepins. The children here 
appeared in an extraordinary way deformed and 
diseased. Most of them were crooked, and with 
enlarged throats ; but one little boy had such 
exquisite grace in his mien and motions, as I never 
before saw equalled in a child. His countenance 
was beautiful for the expression with which it 



overflowed. There wan a mixture of pride and 
gentleness in his eyes and lips, the indications of 
sensibility, which his education will probably per- 
vert to misery or seduce to crime ; but there was 
more of gentleness than of pride, and it seemed 
that the pride was tamed from its original wild- 
ness by the habitual exercise of milder feelings. 
My companion gave him a piece of money, which 
he took without speaking, with a sweet smile of 
easy thankfulness, and then with an unembarrassed 
air turned to his play. All this might scarcely 
be ; but the imagination surely could not forbear 
to breathe into the most inanimate forms, some 
likeness of its own visions, on such a serene and 
glowing evening, in this remote and romantic 
village, beside the calm lake that bore us hither. 

On returning to our inn, we found that the 
servant had arranged our rooms, and deprived 
them of the greater portion of their former discon- 
solate appearance. They reminded my companion 
of Greece : it was five years, he said, since he had 
slept in such beds. The influence of the recol- 
lections excited by this circumstance on our con- 
versation gradually faded, and I retired to rest with 
no unpleasant sensations, thinking of our journey 
to-morrow, and of the pleasure of recounting the 
little adventures of it when we return. 

The next morning we passed Yvoire, a scattered 
village with an ancient castle, whose houses are 
interspersed with trees, and which stands at a little 
distance from Nerni, on the promontory which 
bounds a deep bay, some miles in extent. So soon 
as we arrived at this promontory, the lake began 
to assume an aspect of wilder magnificence. The 
mountains of Savoy, whose summits were bright 
with snow, descended in broken slopes to the lake : 
on high, the rocks were dark with pine forests, 
which become deeper and more immense, until the 
ice and snow mingle with the points of naked rock 
that pierce the blue air ; but below, groves of 
walnut, chesnut, and oak, with openings of lawny 
fields, attested the milder climate. 

As soon as we had passed the opposite promon- 
tory, we saw the river Drance, which descends 
from between a chasm in the mountains, and 
makes a plain near the lake, intersected by its 
divided streams. Thousands of lesolets, beautiful 
water-birds, like sea-gulls, but smaller, with purple 
on their backs, take their station on the shallows 
where its waters mingle with the lake. As we 
approached Evian, the mountains descended more 
precipitously to the lake, and masses of intermingled 
wood and rock overhung its shining spire. 

We arrived at this town about seven o'clock, after 
a day which involved more rapid changes of atmo- 
sphere than I ever recollect to have observed before. 



!M 



LETTERS KKOM GENEVA. 



The morning was cold and wet ; then an easterly 

wind, and the clouds hard and high ; then thunder 
showers, and wind shifting to every quarter ; then 
a warm blast from the south, and Bummer clouds 
hanging over the peaks, with bright blue sky 
between. About half an hour after we had arrived 
at Eviau, a few Hashes of lightning came from a 
dark cloud, directly over head, and continued after 
the cloud had dispersed. u Diespiter per pura 
tonantes cgit equos :" a phenomenon which cer- 
tainly had no influence on me, corresponding with 
that which it produced on Horace. 

The appearance of the inhabitants of Evian is 
more wretched, diseased and poor, than I ever 
recollect to have seen. The contrast indeed 
between the subjects of the King of Sardinia and 
the citizens of the independent republics of Switz- 
erland, affords a powerful illustration of the 
blighting mischiefs of despotism, within the space 
of a few miles. They have mineral waters here, 
eaux savonneuses, they call them. In the evening 
we had some difficulty about our passports, but so 
soon as the syndic heard my companion's rank and 
name, he apologised for the circumstance. The inn 
was good. During our voyage, on the distant height 
of a hill, covered with pine-forests, we saw a ruined 
castle, which reminded me of those on the Rhine. 

We left Evian on the following morning, with a 
wind of such violence as to permit but one sail to 
be carried. The waves also were exceedingly 
high, and our boat so heavily laden, that there 
appeared to be some danger. We arrived, how- 
ever, safe at Meillerie, after passing with great 
speed mighty forests which overhung the lake, and 
lawns of exquisite verdure, and mountains with 
bare and icy points, which rose immediately from 
the summit of the rocks, whose bases were echoing 
to the waves. 

We here heard that the Empress Maria Louisa 
had slept at Meillerie, — before the present inn was 
built, and when the accommodations were those of 
the most wretched village, — in remembrance of 
St. Preux. How beautiful it is to find that the 
common sentiments of human nature can attach 
themselves to those who are the most removed 
from its duties and its enjoyments, when Genius 
pleads for their admission at the gate of Power. 
To own them was becoming in the Empress, 
and confirms the affectionate praise contained in 
the regret of a great and enlightened nation. A 
Bourbon dared not even to have remembered 
Rousseau. She owed this power to that democracy 
which her husband's dynasty outraged, and of 
which it was however, in some sort, the repre- 
sentative among the nations of the earth. This 
little incident shows at once how unfit and how 



impossible it is for the ancient system of opinions} 
or for any power built upon a conspiracy to revive 
them, permanently to subsist among mankind. 
We dined there, and had some honey, the best I 
have ever tasted, the very essence of the mountain 
flowers, and as fragrant. Probably the village 
derives its name from this production. Meillerie 
is the well-known scene of St. Preux's visionary 
exile ; but Meillerie is indeed enchanted ground, 
were Rousseau no magician. Groves of pine, 
chesnut, and walnut overshadow it ; magnificent 
and unbounded forests to which England affords 
no parallel. In the midst of these woods are 
dells of lawny expanse, inconceivably verdant, 
adorned with a thousand of the rarest flowers, and 
odorous with thyme. 

The lake appeared somewhat calmer as we left 
Meillerie, sailing close to the banks, whose magni- 
ficence augmented with the turn of every pro- 
montory. But we congratulated ourselves too 
soon : the wind gradually increased in violence, 
until it blew tremendously ; and, as it came from 
the remotest extremity of the lake, produced waves 
of a frightful height, and covered the whole su» 
face with a chaos of foam. One of our boatmen, 
who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in 
holding the sail at a time when the boat was on 
the point of being driven under water by the 
hurricane. On discovering his error, he let it 
entirely go, and the boat for a moment refused to 
obey the helm ; in addition, the rudder was so 
broken as to render the management of it very 
difficult ; one wave fell in, and then another. My 
companion, an excellent swimmer, took off his 
coat, I did the same, and we sat with our arms 
crossed, every instant expecting to be swamped. 
The sail was, however, again held, the boat obeyed 
the helm, and still in imminent peril from the 
immensity of the waves, we arrived in a few 
minutes at a sheltered port, in the village of St. 
Gingoux. 

I felt in this near prospect of death a mixture 
of sensations, among which terror entered, though 
but subordinately. My feelings would have been 
less painful had I been alone ; but I knew that 
my companion would have attempted to save me, 
and I was overcome with humiliation, when I 
thought that his life might have been risked to 
preserve mine. When we arrived at St. Gingoux, 
the inhabitants, who stood on the shore, unaccus- 
tomed to see a vessel as frail as ours, and fearing 
to venture at all on such a sea, exchanged looks 
of wonder and congratulation with our boatmen, 
who, as well as ourselves, were well pleased to set 
foot on shore. 

St. Gingoux is even more beautiful than Meillerie ; 



LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 



9.5 



the mountains are higher, and their loftiest points 
of elevation descend more abruptly to the lake. On 
high, the aerial summits still cherish great depths 
of snow in then* ravines, and in the paths of their 
unseen torrents. One of the highest of these is 
called Roche de St. Julien, beneath whose pinna- 
cles the forests become deeper and more extensive ; 
the chesnut gives a peculiarity to the scene, which 
is most beautiful, and will make a picture in my 
memory, distinct from all other mountain scenes 
which I have ever before visited. 

As we arrived here early, we took a voiture to 
visit the mouth of the Rhone. We went between 
the mountains and the lake, under groves of mighty 
chesnut trees, beside perpetual streams, which are 
nourished by the snows above, and form stalactites 
on the rocks, over which they fall. We saw an 
immense chesnut tree, which had been overthrown 
by the hurricane of the morning. The place 
where the Rhone joins the lake was marked by 
a line of tremendous breakers ; the river is as 
rapid as when it leaves the lake, but is muddy 
and dark. We went about a league farther on 
the road to La Valais, and stopped at a castle 
called La Tour de Bouverie, which seems to be 
the frontier of Switzerland and Savoy, as we were 
asked for our passports, on the supposition of our 
proceeding to Italy. 

On one side of the road was the immense Roche 
de St. Julien, which overhung it ; through the 
gateway of the castle we saw the snowy mountains 
of La Valais, clothed in clouds, and, on the other 
side, was the willowy plain of the Rhone, in a 
character of striking contrast with the rest of the 
scene, bounded by the dark mountains that over- 
hang Clarens, Vevai, and the lake that rolls be- 
tween. In the midst of the plain rises a little 
isolated hill, on which the white spire of a church 
peeps from among the tufted chesnut woods. We 
returned to St. Gingoux before sunset, and I passed 
the evening in reading Julie. 

As my companion rises late, I had time before 
breakfast, on the ensuing morning, to hunt the 
waterfalls of the river that fall into the lake at St. 
Gingoux. The stream is indeed, from the declivity 
over which it falls, only a succession of waterfalls, 
which roar over the rocks with a perpetual sound, 
and suspend their unceasing spray on the leaves 
and flowers that overhang and adorn its savage 
banks. The path that conducted along this river 
sometimes avoided the precipices of its shores, 
by leading through meadows ; sometimes threaded 
the base of the perpendicular and caverned rocks. 
I gathered in these meadows a nosegay of such 
flowers as I never saw in England, and which 1 
thought more beautiful for that rarity. 



On my return, after breakfast, ire mailed for 
Clarens, determining first to see the three mouths 
of the Rhone, and then the castle of Chillon ; the 
day was fine, and the water calm. We passed 
from the blue waters of the lake over the stream 
of the Rhone, which is rapid even at a great dis- 
tance from its confluence with the lake ; the turbid 
waters mixed with those of the lake, but mixed 
with them unwillingly. (See Nouvelle Htlo'ise, Lettre 
17, Part. 4.) I read Julie all day ; an overflowing, 
as it now seems, surrounded by the scenes which 
it has so wonderfully peopled, of sublimest genius, 
and more than human sensibility. Meillerie, the 
Castle of Chillon, Clarens, the mountains of La 
Valais and Savoy, present themselves to the ima- 
gination as monuments of things that were once 
familiar, and of beings that were once dear to it. 
They were created indeed by one mind, but a mind 
so powerfully bright as to cast a shade of falsehood 
on the records that are called reality. 

We passed on to the Castle of Chillon, and 
visited its dungeons and towers. These prisons 
are excavated below the lake ; the principal dun- 
geon is supported by seven columns, whose branch- 
ing capitals support the roof. Close to the very 
walls, the lake is 800 feet deep ; iron rings are 
fastened to these columns, and on them were 
engraven a multitude of names, partly those of 
visitors, and partly doubtless of the prisoners, of 
whom now no memory remains, and who thus 
beguiled a solitude which they have long ceased to 
feel. One date was as ancient as 1670. At the 
commencement of the Reformation, and indeed 
long after that period, this dungeon was the recep- 
tacle of those who shook, or who denied the system 
of idolatry, from the effects of which mankind is 
even now slowly emerging. 

Close to this long and lofty dungeon was a nar- 
row cell, and beyond it one larger and far more 
lofty and dark, supported upon two unornamented 
arches. Across one of these arches was a beam, 
now black and rotten, on which prisoners were 
hung in secret. I never saw a monument more 
terrible of that cold and inhuman tyranny, which 
it has been the delight of man to exercise over 
man. It was indeed one of those many tremendous 
fulfilments which render the "pernicies humani 
generis" of the great Tacitus so solemn and irre- 
fragable a prophecy. The gendarme, who con- 
ducted us over this castle, told us that there was 
an opening to the lake, by means of a secret spring, 
connected with which the whole dungeon might 
be filled with water before the prisoners could 
possibly escape ! 

We proceeded with a contrary wind to Clarens 
against a heavy swell. I never felt more strongly 



.96 



LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 



than on landing at Clarens, that the spirit of old 
times had deserted its once cherished habitation. 
A thousand times, thought I, have Julia and St. 
Preux walked on this terraced road, looking to- 
wards these mountains which I now behold ; nay, 
treading on the ground where I now tread. From 
the window of our lodging our landlady pointed 
out "le bosquet de Julie." At least the inha- 
bitants of this village are impressed with an idea, 
that the persons of that romance had actual exist- 
ence. In the evening we walked thither. It is, 
indeed, Julia's wood. The hay was making under 
the trees ; the trees themselves were aged, but 
vigorous, and interspersed with younger ones, 
which are destined to be their successors, and in 
future years, when we are dead, to afford a shade 
to future worshippers of nature, who love the 
memory of that tenderness and peace of which 
this was the imaginary abode. We walked for- 
ward among the vineyards, whose narrow terraces 
overlook this affecting scene. Why did the cold 
maxims of the world compel me at this moment to 
repress the tears of melancholy transport which it 
would have been so sweet to indulge, immeasur- 
ably, even until the darkness of night had swallowed 
up the objects which excited them 2 

I forgot to remark, what indeed my companion 
remarked to me, that our danger from the storm 
took place precisely in the spot where Julie and 
her lover were nearly overset, and where St. Preux 
was tempted to plunge with her into the lake. 

On the following day we went to see the castle 
of Clarens, a square strong house, with very few 
windows, surrounded by a double terrace that 
overlooks the valley, or rather the plain of Clarens. 
The road which conducted to it wound up the 
steep ascent through woods of walnut and chesnut. 
We gathered roses on the terrace, in the feeling 
that they might be the posterity of some planted 
by Julie's hand. We sent their dead and withered 
leaves to the absent. 

We went again to " the bosquet de Julie," and 
found that the precise spot was now utterly ob- 
•iterated, and a heap of stones marked the place 
where the little chapel had once stood. Whilst we 
were execrating the author of this brutal folly, 
our guide informed us that the land belonged to 
the convent of St. Bernard, and that this out- 
rage had been committed by their orders. I 
knew before, that if avarice could harden the 
hearts of men, a system of prescriptive religion 
has an influence far more inimical to natural 
sensibility. I know that an isolated man is some- 
times restrained by shame from outraging the 
venerable feelings arising out of the memory of 
genius, which once made nature even lovelier 



than itself ; but associated man holds it as the 
very sacrament of his union to forswear all de- 
licacy, all benevolence, all remorse ; all that is 
true, or tender, or sublime. 

We sailed from Clarens to Vevai. Vevai is a 
town more beautiful in its simplicity than any I 
have ever seen. Its market-place, a spacious 
square interspersed with trees, looks directly 
upon the mountains of Savoy and La Valais, the 
lake, and the valley of the Rhone. It was at 
Vevai that Rousseau conceived the design of Julie. 

From Vevai we came to Ouchy, a village near 
Lausanne. The coasts of the Pays de Vaud, 
though full of villages and vineyards, present an 
aspect of tranquillity and peculiar beauty which 
well compensates for the solitude which I am 
accustomed to admire. The hills are very high 
and rocky, crowned and interspersed with woods. 
Waterfalls echo from the cliffs, and shine afar. In 
one place we saw the traces of two rocks of im- 
mense size, which had fallen from the mountain 
behind. One of these lodged in a room where a 
young woman was sleeping, without injuring her. 
The vineyards were utterly destroyed in its path, 
and the earth torn up. 

The rain detained us two days at Ouchy. We, 
however, visited Lausanne, and saw Gibbon's house. 
We were shown the decayed summer-house where 
he finished his History, and the old acacias on the 
terrace, from which he saw Mont Blanc, after 
having written the last sentence. There is some- 
thing grand and even touching in the regret which 
he expresses at the completion of his task. It was 
conceived amid the ruins of the Capitol. The 
sudden departure of his cherished and accustomed 
toil must have left him, like the death of a dear 
friend, sad and solitary. 

My companion gathered some acacia leaves to 
preserve in remembrance of him. I refrained 
from doing so, fearing to outrage the greater and 
more sacred name of Rousseau ; the contemplation 
of whose imperishable creations had left no vacancy 
in my heart for mortal things. Gibbon had a cold 
and unimpassioned spirit. I never felt more incli- 
nation to rail at the prejudices which cling to such 
a thing, than now that Julie and Clarens, Lausanne 
and the Roman Empire, compelled me to a con- 
trast between Rousseau and Gibbon. 

When we returned, in the only interval of sun- 
shine during the day, I walked on the pier which 
the lake was lashing with its waves. A rainbow 
spanned, the lake, or rather rested one extremity 
of its arch upon the water, and the other at the 
foot of the mountains of Savoy. Some white 
houses, I know not if they were those of Meillerie, 
shone through the yellow fire. 



LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 



97 



On Saturday the 30th of June we quitted Ouchy, 
and after two days of pleasant sailing arrived on 
Sunday evening a# Montalegre. 



LETTER IV. 
To T. P. Esq. 



ST. MARTIN — SERVOZ — CHAMOUNI- 
MONT BLANC. 



-MONTANVERT- 



Hotel de Londres, Chamouni, July 22nd, 1816. 

Whilst you, my friend, are engaged in securing 
a home for us, we are wandering in search of recol- 
lections to embellish it. I do not err in conceiving 
that you are interested in details of all that is 
majestic or beautiful in nature ; but how shall I 
describe to you the scenes by which I am now 
surrounded ? To exhaust the epithets which ex- 
press the astonishment and the admiration — the 
very excess of satisfied astonishment, where expec- 
tation scarcely acknowledged any boundary, is this 
to impress upon your mind the images which fill 
mine now, even till it overflow ? I too have read 
the raptures of travellers ; I will be warned by 
their example ; I will simply detail to you all that 
I can relate, or all that, if related, would enable 
you to conceive, what we have done or seen since 
the morning of the 20th, when we left Geneva. 

We commenced our intended journey to Cha- 
mouni at half-past eight in the morning. We 
passed through the champain country, which ex- 
tends from Mont Saleve to the base of the higher 
Alps. The eountry is sufficiently fertile, covered 
with corn-fields and orchards, and intersected by 
sudden acclivities with flat summits. The day was 
cloudless and excessively hot, the Alps were per- 
petually in sight, and as we advanced, the moun- 
tains, which form their outskirts, closed in around 
us. We passed a bridge over a stream, which dis- 
charges itself into the Arve. The Arve itself, 
much swollen by the rains, flows constantly to the 
right of the road. 

As we approached Bonneville through an avenue 
composed of a beautiful species of drooping poplar, 
we observed that the corn-fields on each side were 
covered with inundation. Bonneville is a neat little 
town, with no conspicuous peculiarity, except the 
white towers of the prison, an extensive building 
overlooking the town. At Bonneville the Alps 
commence, one of which, clothed by forests, rises 
almost immediately from the opposite bank of the 
Arve. 

From Bonneville to Cluses the road conducts 
through a spacious and fertile plain, surrounded on 
all sides by mountains, covered like those of Meil- 
lerie with forests of intermingled pine and chesnut. 



At Cluses the road turns suddenly to the right, 
following the Arve along the chasm, which it seems 
to have hollowed for itself among the perpendicu- 
lar mountains. The scene assumes here a more 
savage and colossal character : the valley becomes 
narrow, affording no more space than is sufficient 
for the river and the road. The pines descend to the 
banks, imitating, with their irregular spires, the 
pyramidal crags, which lift themselves far above the 
regions of forest into the deep azure of the sky, 
and among the white dazzling clouds. The scene, 
at the distance of half a mile from Cluses, differs 
from that of Matlock hi little else than in the 
immensity of its proportions, and in its untameable 
inaccessible solitude, inhabited only by the goats 
which we saw browsing on the rocks. 

Near Maglans, within a league of each other, 
we saw two waterfalls. They were no more than 
mountain rivulets, but the height from which they 
fell, at least of twelve hundred feet, made them 
assume a character inconsistent with the smallness 
of their stream. The first fell from the overhang- 
ing brow of a black precipice on an enormous rock, 
precisely resembling some colossal Egyptian statue 
of a female deity. It struck the head of the 
visionary image, and gracefully dividing there, fell 
from, it in folds of foam more like to cloud than 
water, imitating a veil of the most exquisite woof. 
It then united, concealing the lower part of the 
siatue, and hiding itself in a winding of its channel, 
burst into a deeper fall, and crossed our route hi 
its path towards the Arve. 

The other waterfall was more continuous and 
larger. The violence with which it fell made it 
look more like some shape which an exhalation had 
assumed, than like water, for it streamed beyond 
the mountain, which appeared dark behind it, as 
it might have appeared behind an evanescent 
cloud. 

The character of the scenery continued the same 
until we arrived at St. Martin, (called in the maps 
Sallanches,) the mountains perpetually becoming 
more elevated, exhibiting at every turn of the road 
more craggy summits, loftier and wider extent of 
forests, darker and more deep recesses. 

The following morning we proceeded from St. 
Martin, on mules, to Chamouni, accompanied by 
two guides. We proceeded, as we had done the 
preceding day, along the valley of the Arve, a 
valley surrounded on all sides by immense moun- 
tains, whose rugged precipices are intermixed on 
high with dazzling snow. Their bases were still 
covered with the eternal forests, which perpetually 
grew darker and more profound as we approached 
the inner regions of the mountains. 

On arriving at a small village at the distance of 



LETTERS KKOM GENEVA. 



■ league from St Martin, we dismounted from our 
■rales, and were conducted by our guides to view 

■ cascade. We beheld an immense body oi' water 
fall two hundred and fifty feet, dashing from rook 

to rook, and easting a spray which formed a mist 
around it, in the midst of which hung a multitude 
of sunbows, which faded or became unspeakably 
vivid, as the inconstant sun shone through the 
clouds. When we approached near to it, the rain 
of the spray reached us, and our clothes were 
wetted by the quick-falling but minute particles of 
water. The cataract fell from above iuto a deep 
craggy chasm at our feet, where, changing its 
character to that of a mountain stream, it pursued 
its course towards the Arve, roaring over the rocks 
that impeded its progress. 

As we proceeded, our route still lay through the 
valley, or rather, as it had now become, the vast 
ravine, which is at once the couch and the creation 
of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding 
between mountains, whose immensity staggers the 
imagination. We crossed the path of a torrent, 
which three days since had descended from the 
thawing snow, and torn the road away. 

We dined at Servoz, a little village, where there 
are lead and copper mines, and where we saw a 
cabinet of natural curiosities, like those of Keswick 
and Bethgelert. We saw in this cabinet some 
chamois' horns, and the horns of an exceedingly 
rare animal called the bouquetin, which inhabits 
the deserts of snow to the south of Mont Blanc : it 
is an animal of the stag kind ; its horns weigh, at 
least, twenty-seven English pounds. It is incon- 
ceivable how so small an animal could support so 
inordinate a weight. The horns are of a very 
peculiar conformation, being broad, massy, and 
pointed at the ends, and surrounded with a number 
of rings, which are supposed to afford an indica- 
tion of its age : there were seventeen rings on the 
largest of these horns. 

From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni. 
— Mont Blanc was before us — the Alps, with their 
innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing in 
the complicated windings of the single vale — forests 
inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty 
— intermingled beech and pine, and oak, over- 
shadowed our road, or receded, whilst lawns of 
such verdure as I have never seen before, occupied 
these openings, and gradually became darker in 
their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but it 
was covered with cloud ; its base, furrowed with 
dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow 
intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with 
Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals 
on high. I never knew — I never imagined — what 
mountains were before. The immensity of these 



aerial summits excited, when they suddenly burst 
upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not 
unallied to madness. And remember this was all 
one scene, it all pressed home to our regard and 
our imagination. Though it embraced a vast 
extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot 
into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our 
path ; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and 
black with its depth below, so deep that the very 
roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled 
through it, could not be heard above — all was as 
much our own, as if we had been the creators of 
such impressions in the minds of others as now 
occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose 
harmony held our spirits more breathless than 
that of the divinest. 

As we entered the valley of Chamouni, (which, 
in fact, may be considered as a continuation of 
those which we have followed from Bonneville and 
Cluses,) clouds hung upon the mountains at the 
distance perhaps of 6000 feet from the earth, but 
so as effectually to conceal, not only Mont Blanc, 
but the other aiguilles, as they call them here, 
attached and subordinate to it. We were travel- 
ling along the valley, when suddenly we heard a 
sound as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling 
above ; yet there was something in the sound, 
that told us it could not be thunder. Our guide 
hastily pointed out to us a part of the moun- 
tain opposite, from whence the sound came. It 
was an avalanche. We saw the smoke of its path 
among the rocks, and continued to hear at inter- 
vals the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of 
a torrent, which it displaced, and presently we saw 
its tawny-coloured waters also spread themselves 
over the ravine, which was their couch. 

We did not, as we intended, visit the Glacier des 
Bossons to-day, although it descends within a few 
minutes' walk of the road, wishing to survey it at 
least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier, which 
comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed. Its 
surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable 
figures : conical and pyramidical crystallizations, 
more than fifty feet in height, rise from its 
surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, 
overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. 
This glacier winds upwards from the valley, until 
it joins the masses of frost from which it was 
produced above, winding through its own ravine 
like a bright belt flung over the black region of 
pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere 
magnitude of proportion : there is a majesty of 
outline ; there is an awful grace in the very 
colours which invest these wonderful shapes — a 
charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct 
even from the reality of their unutterable greatness. 



LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 



99 



J„h, 24. 

Yesterday morning we went to the source of the 
Arveiron. It is about a league from this village ; 
the river rolls forth impetuously bom an arch of 
ice, and spreads itself in many streams over a vast 
space of the valley, ravaged and laid hare by its 
inundations. The glacier by which its waters are | 
nourished, overhangs this cavern and the plain, 
and the forests of pine which surround it, with 
terrible precipices of solid ice. On the other side '. 
rises the immense glacier of Montanvert, fifty , 
miles in extent, occupying a chasm among 
mountains of inconceivable height, and of forms so 
pointed and abrupt, that they seem to pierce the 
sky. From this glacier we saw, as we sat on a 
rock, close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, 
masses of ice detach themselves from on high, and 
rush with a loud dull noise into the vale. The 
violence of their fall turned them into powder, 
which flowed over the rocks in imitation of water- 
falls, whose ravines they usurped and filled. 

In the evening, I went with Ducree, my guide, 
the only tolerable person I have seen in this 
country, to visit the glacier of Bossons. This 
glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close to 
the vale, overhanging the green meadows and the 
dark woods with the dazzling whiteness of its 
precipices and pinnacles, wliich are like spires of 
radiant crystal, covered with a net-work of frosted 
silver. These glaciers flow perpetually into the 
valley, ravaging in their slow but irresistible 
progress the pastures and the forests wliich 
surround them, performing a work of desolation in 
ages, which a river of lava might accomplish in an 
hour, but far more irretrievably ; for where the 
ice has once descended, the hardiest plant refuses 
to grow ; if even, as in some extraordinary 
instances, it should recede after its progress has 
once commenced. The glaciers perpetually move 
onward, at the rate of a foot each day, with a 
motion that commences at the spot where, on the 
boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are 
produced by the freezing of the waters which 
arise from the partial melting of the eternal 
snows. They drag with them from the regions 
whence they derive their origin, all the ruins of 
the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense 
accumulations of sand and stones. These are 
driven onwards by the irresistible stream of solid 
ice ; and when they arrive at a declivity of the 
mountain, sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering 
ruin. I saw one of these rocks which had 
descended in the spring, (winter here is the season 
of silence and safety,) which measured forty feet 
in everv direction. 



Tin' ser, like that of Bossons, 

mid image of desolation tliat it 
is possible to conceive. No one dares to approach 
it ; for the enormous pinnacled of ice which 
perpetually fall, are perpetually reproduced. The 
pines of the forest, which bound it at one extremity, 
are overthrown and shattered, to a wide extent, 
at its base. There is something inexpressibly 
dreadful in the aspect of the few branchless trunks, 
which, nearest to the ice lifts, still stand in the 
uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed 
with sand and stones. Within this last year, these 
glaciers have advanced three hundred feet into the 
valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they 
have their periods of increase and decay : the 
people of the country hold an opinion entirely 
different ; but as I judge, more probable. It is 
agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of 
Mont Blanc and the neighbouring mountains 
perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form of 
glaciers, subsists without melting in the valley of 
Chamouni during its transient and variable 
summer. If the snow wliich produces this glacier 
must augment, and the heat of the valley is no 
obstacle to the perpetual existence of such masses 
of ice as have already descended into it, the 
consequence is obvious ; the glaciers must augment 
and will subsist, at least until they have overflowed 
this vale. 

I will not pursue Buffon's sublime but gloomy 
theory — that this globe wliich we inhabit will, at 
some future period, be changed into a mass of 
frost by the encroachments of the polar ice, and of 
that produced on the most elevated points of the 
earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy of 
Ahriman, imagine him throned among these 
desolating snows, among these palaces of death 
and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible 
magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, 
and that he casts around him, as the first essays of 
his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, 
and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, 
at once the proof and symbols of his reign ; — add 
to this, the degradation of the human species — 
who, in these regions, are half deformed or idiotic, 
and most of whom are deprived of anything that 
can excite interest or admiration. This is part 
of the subject more mournful and less sublime ; 
but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher 
should disdain to regard. 

This morning we departed, on the promise of a 
fine day, to visit the glacier of Montanvert. In 
that part where it fills a slanting valley, it is called 
the Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 toises, or 
7600 feet, above the level of the sea. We had not 
proceeded far before the rain began to fall, but we 

H 2 



100 



LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 



persisted until we had accomplished more than 
half of our journey, when we returned, wet through. 



Chamouni, July 2.V7/. 

We have returned from visiting the glacier of 
Montanvert, or as it is called, the Sea of Ice, a 
scene in truth of dizzying wonder. The path that 
winds to it along the side of a mountain, now 
clothed with pines, now intersected with snowy 
hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of Montan- 
vert is three leagues from Chamouni, half of which 
distance is performed on mules, not so sure-footed 
but that on the first day the one which I rode fell 
in what the guides call a mauvevis pas, so that I 
narrowly escaped being precipitated down the 
mountain. We passed over a hollow covered with 
snow, down winch vast stones are accustomed to 
roll. One had fallen the preceding day, a little 
time after we had returned : our guides desired us 
to pass quickly, for it is said that sometimes the 
least sound will accelerate their descent. We 
arrived at Montanvert, however, safe. 

On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes 
of unrelenting frost, surround this vale : their sides 
are banked up with ice and snow, broken, heaped 
high, and exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits 
are sharp and naked pinnacles, whose overhanging 
steepness will not even permit snow to rest upon 
them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and 
there their perpendicular rifts, and shine through 
the driving vapours with inexpressible brilliance : 
they pierce the clouds like things not belonging 
to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a 
mass of undulating ice, and has an ascent suf- 
ficiently gradual even to the remotest abysses of 
these horrible deserts. It is only half a league 
(about two miles) in breadth, and seems much 
less. It exhibits an appearance as if frost had 
suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools of a 
mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon 
its surface. The waves are elevated about twelve 
or fifteen feet from the surface of the mass, which 
is intersected by long gaps of unfathomable depth, 
the ice of whose sides is more beautifully azure 
than the sky. In these regions everything 
changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice 
has one general progress, which ceases neither day 
nor night ; it breaks and bursts for ever : some 
undulations sink while others rise ; it is never the 
same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow 
which fall from their overhanging precipices, or 
roll from their aerial summits, scarcely ceases for 
one moment. One would think that Mont Blanc, 
like the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and 
that the frozen blood for ever circulated through 
his stony veins. 



We dined (M , C , and I) on the 

in the open air, surrounded by this scene. The 
air is piercing and clear. We returned down the 
mountain, sometimes encompassed by the driving 
vapours, sometimes cheered by the sunbeams, and 
arrived at our inn by seven o'clock. 



Montalegre, July 28th. 

The next morning we returned through the rain 
to St. Martin. The scenery had lost something of 
its immensity, thick clouds hanging over the 
highest mountains ; but visitings of sunlight inter- 
vened between the showers, and the blue sky shone 
between the accumulated clouds of snowy whiteness 
which brought them ; the dazzling mountains 
sometimes glittered through a chasm of the clouds 
above our heads, and all the charm of its grandeur 
remained. We repassed Pont Pcllisier, a wooden 
bridge over the Arve, and the ravine of the Arve. 
We repassed the pine forests which overhang the 
defile, the chateau of St. Michael ; a haunted ruin, 
built on the edge of a precipice, and shadowed over 
by the eternal forest. We repassed the vale of 
Servoz, a vale more beautiful, because more 
luxuriant, than that of Chamouni. Mont Blanc 
forms one of the sides of this vale also, and the 
other is inclosed by an irregular amphitheatre of 
enormous mountains, one of which is in ruins, and 
fell fifty years ago into the higher part of the 
valley : the smoke of its fall was seen in Piedmont, 
and people went from Turin to investigate whether 
a volcano had not burst forth among the Alps. It 
continued falling many days, spreading, with the 
shock and thunder of its ruin, consternation into 
the neighbouring vales. In the evening we arrived 
at St. Martin. The next day we wound through 
the valley, which I have described before, and 
arrived in the evening at our home. 

We have bought some specimens of minerals 
and plants, and two or three crystal seals, at Mont 
Blanc, to preserve the remembrance of baring 
approached it. There is a cabinet of histoire 
naturelle at Chamouni, just as at Keswick, Mat- 
lock, and Clifton ; the proprietor of which is the 
very vilest specimen of that vile species of quack, 
that, together with the whole army of aubergistes 
and guides, and indeed the entire mass of the 
population, subsist on the weakness and credulity 
of travellers as leeches subsist on the sick. The 
most interesting of my purchases is a large col- 
lection of all the seeds of rare alpine plants, with 
their names written upon the outside of the papers 
that contain them. These I mean to colonise in 
my garden in England, and to permit you to make 
what choice you please from them. They are 
companions which the Celandine — the classic 



JOURNAL. 



101 



Celandine, need not despise ; they are as wild 
and more daring than he, and will tell him tales 
V)f things even as touching and sublime as the gaze 
of a vernal poet. 

Did I tell you that there are troops of wolves 
among these mountains ? In the winter they 
descend into the valleys, which the snow occupies 



six months of the year, and devour everything 
that they can find out of doors. A wolf is more 
powerful than the fiercest and strongest dog. There 
are no bears in these regions. We heard, when 
we were at Lucerne, that they were occasionally 
found in the forests which surround that lake. 
Adieu. S. 



JOURNAL. 



Geneva, Sunday, \Wi August, 1816. 

See Apollo's Sexton,* who tells us many mys- 
teries of his trade. We talk of Ghosts. Neither 
Lord Byron nor M. G. L. seem to believe in 
them ; and they both agree, in the very face of 
x*eason, that none could believe in ghosts without 
believing in God. I do not think that all the 
persons who profess to discredit these visitations, 
really discredit them ; or, if they do in the 
daylight, are not admonished, by the approach 
of loneliness and midnight, to think more re- 
spectfully of the world of shadows. 

Lewis recited a poem, which he had composed 
at the request of the Princess of Wales. The 
Princess of Wales, he premised, was not only a 
believer in ghosts, but in magic and witchcraft, 
and asserted, that prophecies made in her youth 
had been accomplished since. The tale was of a 
lady in Germany. 

This lady, Minna, had been exceedingly attached 
to her husband, and they had made a vow that 
the one who died first, should return after death 
to visit the other as a ghost. She was sitting one 
day alone in her chamber, when she heard an 
unusual sound of footsteps on the stairs. The door 
opened, and her husband's spectre, gashed with a 
deep wound across the forehead, and in military 
habiliments, entered. She appeared startled at 
the apparition ; and the ghost told her, that when 
he should visit her in future, she would hear a 
passing-bell toll, and these words distinctly uttered 
close to her ear, " Minna, I am here." On inquiry, 
it was found that her husband had fallen in battle 
on the very day she was visited by the vision. 
The intercourse between the ghost and the woman 

* Mr. G. Lewis— so named in " English Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers." When Lewis first saw Lord Byron, he asked 
him earnestly, — " Why did you call me Apollo's Sexton ?" 
The nohle Poet found it difficult to reply to this categorical 
species of reproof. The above stories have, some of them, 
appeared in print ; but, as a ghost story depends entirely 
on the mode in which it is told, I think the reader will be 
pleased to read these, written by Shelley, fresh from their 
relation by Lewis.— M. S. 



continued for some time, until the latter laid aside 
all terror, and indulged herself in the affection 
which she had felt for him while living. One 
evening she went to a ball, and permitted her 
thoughts to be alienated by the attentions of a 
Florentine gentleman, more witty, more graceful, 
and more gentle, as it appeared to her, than any 
person she had ever seen. As he was conducting 
her through the dance, a death-bell tolled. Minna, 
lost in the fascination of the Florentine's attentions, 
disregarded, or did not hear the sound. A second 
peal, louder and more deep, startled the whole 
company, when Minna heard the ghost's accustomed 
whisper, and raising her eyes, saw in an opposite 
mirror the reflection of the ghost, standing over 
her. She is said to have died of terror. 
Lewis told four other stories — all grim. 



A young man who had taken orders, had just 
been presented with a living, on the death of the 
incumbent. It was in the Catholic part of Germany. 
He arrived at the parsonage on a Saturday night ; 
it was summer, and waking about three o'clock in 
the morning, and it being broad day, he saw a 
venerable-looking man, but with an aspect exceed- 
ingly melancholy, sitting at a desk in the window, 
reading, and two beautiful boys standing near him, 
whom he regarded with looks of the profoundest 
grief. Presently he rose from his seat, the boys 
followed him, and they were no more to be seen. 
The young man, much troubled, arose, hesitating 
whether he should regard what he had seen as a 
dream, or a waking phantasy. To divert his 
dejection, he walked towards the church, which 
the sexton was already employed in preparing for 
the morning service. The first sight that struck 
him was a portrait, the exact resemblance of the 
man whom he had seen sitting in his chamber. It 
was the custom in this district to place the portrait 
of each minister, after his death, in the church. 

He made the minutest inquiries respecting his 



102 



JOURNAL. 



predecessor, and learned that he was universally 

beloved, 18 a man of unexampled integrity and 
benevolence ; but that he was the prey of a secret 
and perpetual sorrow. His grief WAS supposed to 
have arisen from an attachment to a young lady, 
with whom his situation did not permit him to 
unite himself. Others, however, asserted, that a 
eonnexion did subsist between them, and that 
even she occasionally brought to his house two 
beautiful boys, the offspring of their connexion. — 
Nothing further occurred until the cold weather 
came, and the new minister desired a fire to be 
lighted in the stove of the room where he slept. 
A hideous stench arose from the stove as soon as 
it was lighted, and, on examining it, the bones of 
two male children were found within. 



Lord Lyttleton and a number of his friends 
were joined during the chase by a stranger. He 
was excellently mounted, and displayed such 
courage, or, rather so much desperate rashness, 
that no other person in the hunt could follow him. 
The gentlemen, when the chase was concluded, 
invited the stranger to dine with them. His 
conversation was something of a wonderful kind. 
He astonished, he interested, he commanded the 
attention of the most inert. As night came on, 
the company, being weary, began to retire one by 
one, much later than the usual hour: the most 
intellectual among them were retained latest by 
the stranger's fascination. As he perceived that 
they began to depart, he redoubled his efforts to 
retain them. At last, when few remained, he 
entreated them to stay with him ; but all pleaded 
the fatigue of a hard day's chase, and all at last 
retired. They had been in bed about an hour, 
when they were awakened by the most horrible 
screams, which issued from the stranger's room. 
Every one rushed towards it. The door was 
locked. After a moment's deliberation they burst 
it open, and found the stranger stretched on the 
ground, writhing with agony, and weltering in 
blood. On their entrance he arose, and collecting 
himself, apparently with a strong effort, entreated 
them to leave him — not to disturb him, that he 
would give every possible explanation in the 
morning. They complied. In the morning, his 
chamber was found vacant, and he was seen no 
more. 



Miles Andrews, a friend of Lord Lyttleton, 
was sitting one night alone when Lord Lyttleton 
came in, and informed him that he was dead, and 
that this was his ghost which he saw before him. 



Andrews pettishly told him not to play any ridi- 
culous tricks upon him, for he was not in a temper 
to bear them. The ghost then departed. In the' 
morning Andrews asked his servant at what hour 
Lord Lyttleton had arrived. The servant said he 
did not know that he had arrived, but that he 
would inquire. On inquiry it was found that Lord 
Lyttleton had not arrived, nor had the door been 
opened to any one during the whole night. 
Andrews sent to Lord Lyttleton, and discovered, 
that he had died precisely at the hour of the 
apparition. 



A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived 
on the skirts of an extensive forest in the east of 
Germany lost his way. He wandered for some 
hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a 
distance. On approaching it, he was surprised to 
observe, that it proceeded from the interior of a 
ruined monastery. Before he knocked he thought 
it prudent to look through the window. He saw 
a multitude of cats assembled round a small grave, 
four of whom were letting down a coffin with a 
crown upon it. The gentleman, startled at this 
unusual sight, and imagining that he had arrived 
among the retreats of fiends or witches, mounted 
his horse and rode away with the utmost precipi- 
tation. He arrived at his friend's house at a late 
horn', who had sate up for him. On his arrival his 
friend questioned as to the cause of the traces of 
trouble visible in his face. He began to recount 
his adventure, after much difficulty, knowing that 
it was scarcely possible that his friends should give 
faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned 
the coffin with a crown upon it, than his friend's 
cat, who seemed to have been lying asleep before 
the fire, leaped up, saying-—" Then I am the King 
of the Cats !" and scrambled up the chimney, and 
was seen no more. 

Thursday, 29th August. — We depart from 
Geneva, at nine in the morning. The Swiss are 
very slow drivers ; besides which we have Jura to 
mount ; we, therefore, go a very few posts to-day. 
The scenery is very beautiful, and we see many 
magnificent views. We pass Les Rousses, which, 
when we crossed in the spring, was deep in snow. 
We sleep at Morrez. 

Friday, 30th. — We leave Morrez, and arrive in 
the evening at Dole, after a various day. 

Saturday, 31st. — From Dole we go to Rouvray, 
where we sleep. We pass through Dijon ; and, 
after Dijon, take a different route than that which 
we followed on the two other occasions. The 
scenery has some beauty and singulaiity in the 
line of the mountains which surround the Val de 



JOURNAL. 



103 



Suzon. Low, yet precipitous hills, covered with 
vines or woods, aud with streams, meadows, and 
poplars, at the bottom. 

Sunday, September 1st. — Leave Rouvray, pass 
Auxerre, where we dine ; a pretty town, and arrive, 
at two o'clock, at Villeneuve lc Guiard. 

Monday 2d. — From Villeneuve le Guiard, we 
arrive at Fontainebleau. The scenery around this 
palace is wild and even savage. The soil is full of 
rocks, apparently granite, which on every side 
break through the ground. The hills are low, but 
precipitous and rough. The valleys, equally wild, 
are shaded by forests. In the midst of this wilder- 
ness stands the palace. Some of the apartments 
equal in magnificence anything that I could conceive. 
The roofs are fretted with gold, and the canopies 
of velvet. From Fontainebleau we proceed to 
Versailles, in the route towards Rouen. We arrive 
at Versailles at nine. 

Tuesday 3d. — We saw the palace and gardens 
of Versailles and le Grand et Petit Trianon. They 
surpass Fontainebleau. The gardens are full of 
statues, vases, fountains, and colonnades. In all 
that essentially belongs to a garden they are 
extraordinarily deficient. The orangery is a 
stupid piece of expense. There was one orange- 
tree, not apparently so old, sown in 1442. We 
saw only the gardens and the theatre at the Petit 
Trianon. The gardens are in the English taste, 
and extremely pretty. The Grand Trianon was 
open. It is a summer palace, light, yet magnificent. 
We were unable to devote the time it deserved to 
the gallery of paintings here. There was a portrait 
of Madame de la Valliere, the repentant mistress 
of Louis XIV. She was melancholy, but exceed- 
ingly beautiful, and was represented as holding a 
skull, and sitting before a crucifix, pale, and with 
downcast eyes. 

We then went to the great palace . The apartments 
are unfurnished ; but even with this disadvantage, 
are more magnificent than those of Fontainebleau. 
They are lined with marble of various colours, 
whose pedestals and capitals are gilt, and the 
ceiling is richly gilt with compartments of painting. 
The arrangement of these materials has in them, 



it is true, something effeminate and royal. Could a 
Grecian architect have commanded all the labour 
and money which was expended on Versailles, he 
would have produced a fabric which the whole 
world has never equalled. We saw the Hall of 
Hercules, the balcony where the King and the 
Queen exhibited themselves to the Parisian mob. 
The people who showed us through the palace, 
obstinately refused to say anything about the 
Revolution. We could not even find out in which 
chamber the rioters of the 10th August found the 
king. We saw the Salle d'Opera, where are now 
preserved the portraits of the kings. There was 
the race of the house of Orleans, with the exception 
of Egalite, all extremely handsome. There was 
Madame de Maintenon, and beside her a beautiful 
little girl, the daughter of La Valliere. The 
pictures had been hidden during the Revolution. 
We saw the Library of Louis XVI. The librarian 
had held some place in the ancient court near 
Marie- Antoinette. He returned with the Bourbons, 
and was waiting for some better situation. He 
showed us a book which he had preserved during 
the Revolution. It was a book of paintings, re- 
presenting a tournament at the Court of Louis 
XIV. ; and it seemed that the present desolation 
of France, the fury of the injured people, and all 
the horrors to which they abandoned themselves, 
stung by their long sufferings, flowed naturally 
enough from expenditures so immense, as must 
have been demanded by the magnificence of this 
tournament. The vacant rooms of this palace 
imaged well the hollow show of monarchy. After 
seeing these things we departed toward Havre, 
and slept at Auxerre. 

Wednesday 4th. — We passed tlirough Rouen, 
and saw the cathedral, an immense specimen of 
the most costly and magnificent gothic. The 
interior of the church disappoints. We saw the 
burial-place of Richard Cceur de Lion and his 
brother. The altar of the church is a fine piece 
of marble. Sleep at Yvetot. 

Thursday 5th. — We arrive at Havre, and wait 
for the packet — wind contrary. 

S. 



L UTTERS FROM ITALY. 



LETTER 1. 

To Lkigh Hunt, Esq. 

Lyons, March 22, 1818. 

My dear Friend, — Why did you not wake me 
that night before we left England, you and Mari- 
anne ? I take this as rather an unkind piece of 
kindness in you ; but which, in consideration of the 
six hundred miles between us, I forgive. 

We have journeyed towards the spring, that has 
been hastening to meet us from the south ; and 
though our weather was at first abominable, we 
have now warm sunny days, and soft winds, and a 
sky of deep azure, the most serene I ever saw. 
The heat in this city to-day, is like that of London 
in the midst of summer. My spirits and health 
sympathize in the change. Indeed, before I left 
London, my spirits were as feeble as my health, 
and I had demands on them which I found it 
difficult to supply. I have read " Foliage : " with 
most of the poems I am already familiar. What 
a delightful poem the " Nymphs" is ! It is truly 
poetical, in the intense and emphatic sense of the 
word. If six hundred miles were not between us, 
I should say what pity that glib was not omitted, 
and that the poem is not as faultless as it is beau- 
tiful. But, for fear I should spoil your next poem, 
I will not let slip a word upon the subject. 

Give my love to Marianne and her sister, and 
tell Marianne she defrauded me of a kiss by not 
waking me when she went away, and that, as I 
have no better mode of conveying it, I must take 
the best, and ask you to pay the. debt. When 
shall I see you again % Oh, that it might be in 
Italy ! I confess that the thought of how long we 
may be divided makes me very mleancholy. Adieu, 
my dear friends. Write soon. 

Ever most affectionately yours, 
P. B. S.* 



* In a brief journal I kept at that time, I find a few 
pages in Shelley's handwriting, descriptive of the passage 
over the mountains of Les Echelles : u March 26, Thurs- 
day. We travel towards the mountains, and begin to 
enter the valleys of the Alps. The country becomes 
covered again with verdure and cultivation, and white 
chateaux and scattered cottages among woods of old oak 
and walnut trees. The vines are here peculiarly pictur- 



LETTER II. 
To T. L. P. Esq. 

Milan, April 1318. 
My dear P. — Behold us arrived at the end oi 
our journey — that is, within a few miles of it — 
because we design to spend the summer on the 
shore of the Lake of Como. Our journey was 
somewhat painful from the cold — and in no other 
manner interesting until we passed the Alps : of 

esque ; they are trellissed upon immense stakes, and the 
trunks of them are moss-covered and hoary with age. 
Unlike the French vines, which creep lowly on the 
ground, they form rows of interlaced bowers, which, when 
the leaves are green and the red grapes are hanging among 
those hoary branches, will afford a delightful shadow to 
those who sit upon the moss underneath. The vines are 
sometimes planted in the open fields, and sometimes 
among lofty orchards of apple and pear trees, the twigs of 
which were just becoming purple with the bursting 
blossoms. 

We dined at Les Echelles, a village at the foot of the 
mountain of the same name, the boundaries of France 
and Savoy. Before this we had been stopped at Pont 
Bonvoisin, where the legal limits of the French and Sar- 
dinian territories are placed. We here heard that a 
Milanese had been sent back all the way to Lyons, because 
his passport was unauthorised by the Sardinian Consul, 
a few days before, and that we should be subjected to the 
same treatment. We, in respect to the character of our 
nation I suppose, were suffered to pass. Our books, how- 
ever, were, after a long discussion, sent to Chambery, to 
be submitted to the censor ; a priest, who admits nothing 
of Rousseau, Voltaire, &c, into the dominions of the King 
of Sardinia. All such books are burned. 

After dinner we ascended Les Echelles, winding along 
a road cut through perpendicular rocks, of immense 
elevation, by Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, in 1582. 
The rocks, which cannot be less than a thousand feet in 
perpendicular height, sometimes overhang the road on 
each side, and almost shut out the sky. The scene is 
like that described in the Prometheus of ^schylus. Vast 
rifts and caverns in the granite precipices, wintry moun- 
tains with ice and snow above ; the loud sounds of unseen 
waters within the caverns, and walls of toppling rocks, | 
only to be scaled as he describes, by the winged chariot of 
the ocean nymphs. 

Under the dominion of this tyranny, the inhabitants of 
the fertile valleys, bounded by these mountains, are in a 
state of most frightful poverty and disease. At the foot of 
this ascent, were cut into the rocks in several places, 
stories of the misery of the inhabitants, to move the com- 
passion of the traveller. One old man, lame and blind, 
crawled out of a hole in the rock, wet with the perpetual 
melting of the snows of above, and dripping like a shower- 
bath. 

The country, as we descended to Chambery, continued 
as beautiful ; though marked with somewhat of a softer 
character than before : we arrived a little after night-fall." 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



105 



course I except the Alps themselves ; hut no sooner 
had we arrived at Italy, than the loveliness of the 
earth and the serenity of the sky made the greatest 
difference in my sensations. I depend on these 
things for life ; for in the smoke of cities, and the 
tumult of human kind, and the chilling fogs and 
rain of our own country, I can hardly be said to 
live. With what delight did I hear the woman, 
who conducted us to see the triumphal arch of 
Augustus at Susa, speak the clear and complete 
language of Italy, though half unintelligible to me, 
after that nasal and abbreviated cacophony of the 
French ! A ruined arch of magnificent pro- 
portions in the Greek taste, standing in a kind of 
road of green lawn, overgrown with violets and 
primroses, and in the midst of stupendous moun- 
tains, and a blonde woman, of light and graceful 
manners, something in the style of Fuseli's Eve, 
were the first things we met in Italy. 

This city is very agreeable. We went to the 
opera last night — which is a most splendid exhibi- 
tion. The opera itself was not a favourite, and the 
singers very inferior to our own. But the ballet, 
or rather a kind of melodrame or pantomimic 
drama, was the most splendid spectacle I ever saw. 
We have no Miss Melanie here — in every other 
respect, Milan is unquestionably superior. The 
manner in which language is translated into gesture, 
the complete and full effect of the whole as illus- 
trating the history in question, the unaffected self- 
possession of each of the actors, even to the chil- 
dren, made this choral drama more impressive 
than I could have conceived possible. The story 
is Othello, and strange to say, it left no disagreeable 
impression. 

I write, but I am not in the humour to write, 
and you must expect longer, if not more entertain- 
ing, letters soon — that is, in a week or so — when I 
am a little recovered from my journey. Pray tell 
us all the news with regard to our own offspring, 
whom we left at nurse in England ; as well as 
those of our friends. Mention Cobbett and politics 
too — and Hunt — to whom Mary is now writing — 
and particularly your own plans and yourself. 
You shall hear more of me and my plans soon. 
My health is improved already — and my spirits 
something — and I have many literary schemes, 
and one in particular — which I thirst to be settled 
that I may begin. I have ordered Oilier to send 
you some sheets &c, for revision. 

Adieu. — Always faithfully yours, 
P. B. S. 



LETTER III. 
ToT.L.P Esq. 

Milan, April 20, 1818. 

My dear P. — I had no conception that the 
distance between us, measured by time in respect 
of letters, was so great. I have but just received 
yours dated the 2nd — and when you will receive 
mine written from this city somewhat later than 
the same date, I cannot know. I am sorry to hear 
that you have been obliged to remain at Marlow ; 
a certain degree of society being almost a necessity 
of life, particularly as we are not to see you this 
summer in Italy. But this, I suppose, must be as 
it is. I often revisit Marlow in thought. The 
curse of this life is, that whatever is once known, 
can never be unknown. You inhabit a spot, which 
before you inhabit it, is as indifferent to you as any 
other spot upon earth, and when, persuaded by 
some necessity, you think to leave it, you leave it 
not ; it clings to you — and with memories of tilings, 
which, in your experience of them, gave no such 
promise, revenges your desertion. Time flows on, 
places are changed ; friends who were with us, are 
no longer with us ; yet what has been seems yet 
to be, but barren and stripped of life. See, I have 
sent you a study for Nightmare Abbey. 

Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como, 
looking for a house. This lake exceeds any thing 
I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the 
arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and 
narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river 
winding among the mountains and the forests. 
We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of 
country called the Tremezina, and saw the various 
aspects presented by that part of the lake. The 
mountains between Como and that village, or rather 
cluster of villages, are covered on high with ches- 
nut forests (the eating chesnuts, on which the 
inhabitants of the country subsist in time of 
scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very 
verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary 
branches. But usually the immediate border of 
this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay, 
and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and olives which 
grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang 
the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are 
filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. 
Other flowering shrubs, which I cannot name, 
grow there also. On high, the towers of village 
churches are seen white among the dark forests. 
Beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the 
south, the mountains descend less precipitously to 
the lake, and although they are much higher, and 



106 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



some covered with perpetual snow, there inter- 
venes between them and the lake a range of lower 
hills, which have glens and rifts opening to the 
Other, such as I should fancy the abysses of Ida or 
Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, and 
orange, and lemon trees, which are now so loaded 
with fruit, that there is more fruit than leaves, — 
and vineyards. This shore of the lake is one con- 
tinued village, and the Milanese nobility have their 
villas here. The union of culture and the untame- 
able profusion and loveliness of nature is here so 
close, that the line where they are divided can 
hardly be discovered. But the finest scenery is 
that of the Villa PJjniana ; so called from a foun- 
tain which ebbs and flows every three hours, 
described by the younger Pliny, which is in the 
court-yard. This house, which was once a magni- 
ficent palace, and is now half in ruins, we are 
endeavouring to procure. It is built upon ter- 
races raised from the bottom of the lake, together 
with its garden, at the foot of a semicircular 
precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of 
chesnut. The scene from the colonnade is the 
most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely 
that eye ever beheld. On one side is the moun- 
tain, and immediately over you are clusters of 
cypress- trees of an astonishing height, which seem 
to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the 
clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of immense 
size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand 
channels to the lake. On the other side is seen 
the blue extent of the lake and the mountains,, 
speckled with sails and spires. The apartments of 
the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill furnished 
and antique. The terraces, which overlook the 
lake, and conduct under the shade of such immense 
laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are 
most delightful. We staid at Como two days, and 
have now returned to Milan, waiting the issue of 
our negotiation about a house. Como is only six 
leagues from Milan, and its mountains are seen 
from the cathedral. 

This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. 
It is built of white marble, and cut into pinnacles 
of immense height, and the utmost delicacy of 
workmanship, and loaded with sculpture. The 
effect of it, piercing the solid blue with those groups 
of dazzling spires, relieved by the serene depth of 
this Italian heaven, or by moonlight when the stars 
seem gathered among those clustered shapes, is 
beyond any thing I had imagined architecture 
capable of producing. The interior, though very 
sublime, is of a more earthly character, and with 
its stained glass and massy granite columns over- 
loaded with antique figures, and the silver lamps, 
that burn for ever under the canopy of black cloth 



beside the brazen altar and the marble fretwork of 
the dome, give it the aspect of some gorgeous 
sepulchre. There is one solitary spot among 
those aisles, behind the altar, where the fight 
of day is dim and yellow under the storied window, 
which I have chosen to visit, and read Dante 
there. 

I have devoted this summer, and indeed the 
next year, to the composition of a tragedy on the 
subject of Tasso's madness, which I find upon 
inspection is, if properly treated, admirably dra- 
matic and poetical. But, you will say, I have no 
dramatic talent ; very true, in a certain sense ; 
but I have taken the resolution to see what kind 
of a tragedy a person without dramatic talent 
could write. It shall be better morality than 
Fazio, and better poetry than Bertram, at least. 
You tell me nothing of Rhododaphne, a book 
from which, I confess, I expected extraordinary 
success. 

Who lives in my house at Marlow now, or what 
is to be done with it ? I am seriously persuaded 
that the situation was injurious to my health, or I 
should be tempted to feel a very absurd interest in 
who is to be its next possessor. The expense of 
our journey here has been very considerable — but 
we are now living at the hotel here, in a kind of 
Pension, which is very reasonable in respect of 
price, and when we get into a menage of our own, 
we have every reason to expect that we shall 
experience something of the boasted cheapness of 
Italy. The finest bread, made of a sifted flour, 
the whitest and the best I ever tasted, is only one 
English 'penny a pound. All the necessaries of life 
bear a proportional relation to this. But then the 
luxuries, tea, &c, are very dear, — and the English, 
as usual, are cheated in a way that is quite ridi- 
culous, if they have not their wits about them. We 
do not know a single human being, and the opera, 
until last night, has been always the same. Lord 
Byron, we hear, has taken a house for three years, 
at Venice ; whether we shall see him or not, I do 
not know. The number of English who pass 
through this town is very great. They ought to 
be in their own country in the present crisis. 
Their conduct is wholly inexcusable. The people 
here, though inoffensive enough, seem both in 
body and soul a miserable race. The men are 
hardly men ; they look like a tribe of stupid and 
shrivelled slaves, and I do not think that I have 
seen a gleam of intelligence in the countenance of 
man since I passed the Alps. The women in 
enslaved countries are always better than the 
men ; but they have tight-laced figures, and figures 
and mien which express (0 how unlike the French!) 
a mixture of the coquette and prude, which reminds 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



107 



me of the worst characteristics of tho English.* 
Everything hut humanity is in much greater per- 
fection here than in France. The cleanliness and 
comfort of the urns is something quite English. 
The country is beautifully cultivated ; and alto- 
gether, if you can, as one ought always to do, find 
your happiness in yourself, it is a most delightful 
and commodious place to five in. 

Adieu. — Your affectionate friend, 
P. B. S. 



LETTER IV. 
To T. L. P. Esq. 

Milan, April 30ih, 1818. 

My dear P., — I write, simply to tell you, to 
direct your next letters, Poste Restante, Pisa. 
We have engaged a vetturino for that city, and 
leave Milan to-morrow morning. Our journey will 
occupy six or seven days. 

Pisa is not six miles from the Mediterranean, 
with which it communicates by the river Arno. 
We shall pass by Piacenza, Parma, Bologna, the 
Apennines, and Florence, and I will endeavour to 
tell you something of these celebrated places in 
my next letter ; but I cannot promise much, for, 
though my health is much improved, my spirits 
are unequal, and seem to desert me when I attempt 
to write. 

Pisa, they say, is uninhabitable in the midst 
of summer — we shall do, therefore, what other 
people do, retire to Florence, or to the mountains. 
But I will write to you our plans from Pisa, when 
I shall understand them better myself. 

You may easily conjecture the motives which led 
us to forego the divine solitude of Como. To me, 
whose chief pleasure in fife is the contemplation 
of nature, you may imagine how great is this loss. 

Let us hear from you once a fortnight. Do not 
forget those who do not forget you. 

Adieu. — Ever most sincerely yours, 
P. B. Shelley. 



LETTER V. 
To T. L. P. Esq. 

Livorno, June 5, 1818. 
My dear P., — We have not heard from you 
since the middle of April — that is, we have received 
only one letter from you since our departure from 

* These impressions of Shelley, with regard to the 
Italians, formed in ignorance, and with precipitation, 
became altogether altered after a longer stay in Italy. He 
quickly discovered the extraordinary intelligence and 
genius of this wonderful people, amidst the ignorance in 
which they are carefully kept by their rulers, and the 
vices, fostered by a religious system, which these same 
rulers have used as their most successful engine. 



England. It necessarily follows that some acci- 
dent has intercepted them. Address, in future, to 
the care of Mr. Gisborue, Livorno — and I shall 
receive them, though sometimes somewhat circuit- 
ously, yet always securely. 

We left Milan on the 1st of May, and travelled 
across the Apennines to Pisa. This part of the 
Apennine is far less beautiful than the Alps ; the 
mountains are wide and wild, and the whole scenery 
broad and undetermined — the imagination cannot 
find a home in it. The plain of the Milanese, and 
that of Parma, is exquisitely beautiful — it is like 
one garden, or rather cultivated wilderness ; 
because the corn and the meadow-grass grow under 
high and thick trees, festooned to one another by 
regular festoons of vines. On the seventh day we 
arrived at Pisa, where we remained three or four 
days. A large disagreeable city, almost without 
inhabitants. We then proceeded to this great 
trading town, where we have remained a month, 
and which, in a few days, we leave for the Bagni 
di Lucca, a kind of watering-place situated in the 
depth of the Apennines ; the scenery surroundiug 
this village is very fine. 

We have made some acquaintance with a very 
amiable and accomplished lady, Mrs. Gisborne, 
who is the sole attraction in this most unattractive 
of cities. We had no idea of spending a month 
here, but she has made it even agreeable. We 
shall see something of Italian society at the Bagni 
di Lucca, where the most fashionable people 
resort. 

When you send my parcel — which, by-the-bye, 
I should request you to direct to Mr. Gisborne- — 
I wish you could contrive to enclose the two last 
parts of Clarke's Travels, relating to Greece, and 
belonging to Hookham. You know I subscribe 
there still — and I have determined to take the 
Examiner here. You would, therefore, oblige me, 
by sending it weekly, after having read it yourself, 
to the same direction, and so clipped, as to make 
as little weight as possible. 

I write as if writing where perhaps my letter 
may never arrive. 

With every good wish from all of us, 

Believe me most sincerely yours, 
P. B. S. 



LETTER VI. 

To Mr. and Mrs. GISBORNE, 

(leghorn). 

You cannot know, as some friends in England 

do, to whom my silence is still more inexcusable, 

that this silence is no proof of forgetfuluess or 

neglect. 



108 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



I have, in truth, nothing to say, but that I shall 
be happy to Bee you again, and renew our delightful 

walks, until the desire or the duty of seeing new 
things hurries us away. We have spent a month 
here hi our aeeustomed solitude, with the exception 
of one night at the Casino ; and the choice society 
of all ages, which I took care to pack up in a large 
trunk before we left England, have revisited us 
here. I am employed just now, having little better 
to do, in translating into my faint and inefficient 
periods, the divine eloquence of Plato's Symposium; 
only as an exercise, or, perhaps, to give Mary some 
idea of the manners and feelings of the Athenians 
— so different on many subjects from that of any 
other community that ever existed. 

We have almost finished Ariosto — who is enter- 
taining and graceful, and sometimes a poet. For- 
give me, worshippers of a more equal and tolerant 
divinity in poetry, if Ariosto pleases me less than 
you. Where is the gentle seriousness, the delicate 
sensibility, the calm and sustained energy, without 
which true greatness cannot be 1 He is so cruel, 
too, in his descriptions ; his most prized virtues 
are vices almost without disguise. He constantly 
vindicates and embellishes revenge in its grossest 
form ; the most deadly superstition that ever 
infested the world. How different from the tender 
and solemn enthusiasm of Petrarch — or even the 
delicate moral sensibility of Tasso, though some- 
what obscured by an assumed and artificial style. 

We read a good deal here — and we read little 
in Livorno. We have ridden, Mary and I, once 
only, to a place called Prato Fiorito, on the top of 
the mountains : the road, winding through forests, 
and over torrents, and on the verge of green 
ravines, affords scenery magnificently fine. I 
cannot describe it to you, but bid you, though 
vainly, come and see. I take great delight in 
watching the changes of the atmosphere here, and 
the growth of the thunder showers with which the 
noon is often overshadowed, and which break and 
fade away towards evening into flocks of delicate 
clouds. Our fire-flies are fading away fast; but 
there is the planet Jupiter, who rises majestically 
over the rift in the forest-covered mountains to 
the south, and the pale summer hghtning which is 
spread out every night, at intervals, over the sky. 
No doubt Providence has contrived these things, 
that, when the fire-flies go out, the low-flying owl 
may see her way home. 

Remember me kindly to the Machinista. 

With the sentiment of impatience until we see 
you again in the autumn, 

I am, yours most sincerely, 

P. B. Shelley. 

Bagni di Lucca, July 10th, 1818. 



LETTER VII. 
To WILLIAM GODWIN, Esq. 

Bagni di Lucca, July 25lh, 1818. 

My dear Godwin, — We have, as yet, seen 
nothing of Italy which marks it to us as the 
habitation of departed greatness. The serene sky, 
the magnificent scenery, the delightful productions 
of the climate, are known to us, indeed, as the 
same with those which the ancients enjoyed. But 
Rome and Naples — even Florence, are yet to see ; 
and if we were to write you at present a history of 
our impressions, it would give you no idea that we 
lived in Italy. 

I am exceedingly delighted with the plan you 
propose of a book, illustrating the character of 
our calumniated republicans. It is precisely the 
subject for Mary ; and I imagine that, but for the 
fear of being excited to refer to books not within 
her reach, she would attempt to begin it here, and 
order the works you notice. I am unfortunately 
little skilled in English history, and the interest 
which it excites in me is so feeble, that I find it 
a duty to attain merely to that general knowledge 
of it which is indispensable. 

Mary has just finished Ariosto with me, and, 
indeed, has attained a very competent knowledge 
of Italian. She is now reading Livy. I have 
been constantly occupied in literature, but have 
written little — except some translations from Plato, 
in which I exercised myself, in the despair of 
producing anything original. The Symposium of 
Plato seems to me one of the most valuable pieces 
of all antiquity ; whether we consider the intrinsic 
merit of the composition, or the light which it 
throws on the inmost state of manners and opinions 
among the ancient Greeks. I have occupied myself 
in translating this, and it has excited me to attempt 
an Essay upon the cause of some differences 
in sentiment between the Ancients and Moderns, 
with respect to the subject of the dialogue. 

Two things give us pleasure in your last 
letters. The resumption of [your Answer to} 
Malthus, and the favourable turn of the general 
election. If Ministers do not find Sv«£e means, 
totally inconceivable to me, of plunging the nation 
in war, do you imagine that they can subsist ? 
Peace is all that a country, in the present state of 
England, seems to require, to afford it tranquillity 
and leisure for attempting some remedy ; not to 
the universal evils of all constituted society, but to 
the peculiar system of misrule under which those 
evils have been exasperated now. I wish that I 
had health or spirits that would enable me to 



LETTERS PROM ITALY. 



109 



enter into public affairs, or that 1 could timl words 
to express all that I feel and know. 

The modern Italians seem a miserable people, 
without sensibility, or imagination, or under- 
standing. Their outside is polished, and an 
intercourse with them seems to proceed with much 
facility, though it ends in nothing, and produces 
nothing. The women are particularly empty, and 
though possessed of the same kind of superficial 
grace, are devoid of every cultivation and 
refinement. They have a ball at the Casino here 
every Sunday, which we attend — but neither Mary 

nor c dance. 1 do not know whether they 

refrain from philosophy or protestantism. 

I hear that poor Mary's book is attacked most 
violently in the Quarterly Review. We have 
heard some praise of it, and among others, an 
article of Walter Scott's in Blackwood's Magazine. 

If you should have anything to send us — and, 
I assure you, anything relating to England is 
interesting to us — commit it to the care of Oilier 

the bookseller, or P ; they send me a parcel 

every quarter. 

My health is, I think, better, and, I imagine, 
continues to improve, but I still have busy thoughts 
and dispiriting cares, which I would shake off — and 

it is now summer. A thousand good wishes to 

yourself and your undertakings. 

Ever most affectionately yours, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER VIII. 

To Mrs. SHELLEY, 

/BAGNT DI LUCCA). 

Florence, Thursday, 1 1 o'Clock, 
20th August^ 1818. 
Dearest Mary, 
We have been delayed in this city four hours, 
for the Austrian minister's passport, but are now 
on the point of setting out with a vetturino, who 
engages to take us on the third day to Padua ; 
that is, we shall only sleep three nights on the 
road. Yesterday's journey, performed in a one- 
horse cabriolet, almost without springs, over a 

rough road, was excessively fatiguing. 

suffered most from it ; for, as to myself, there 
are occasions in which fatigue seems a useful 
medicine, as I have felt no pain in my side — a 
most delightful respite — since I left you. The 
country was various and exceedingly beautiful. 
Sometimes there were those low cultivated lands, 
with their vine festoons, and large bunches of 
grapes just becoming purple — at others we passed 
between high mountains, crowned with some of 
the most majestic Gothic ruins I ever saw, which 



frowned from the bare precipices, or were half 
seen among the olive-copses. As we approached 
Florence, the country became cultivated to a 
very high degree, the plain was filled with the 
most beautiful villas, and, as far as the eye could 
reach, the mountains were covered with them ; 
for the plains are bounded on all sides by blue and 
misty mountains. The vines are hero trailed on 
low trellisses of reeds interwoven into crosses to 
support them, and the grapes, now almost ripe, are 
exceedingly abundant. You everywhere meet 
those teams of beautiful white oxen, which are now 
labouring the little vine-divided fields with their 
Virgilian ploughs and carts. Florence itself, that 
is the Lung' Arno (for I have seen no more), 
I think is the most beautiful city I have yet 
seen. It is surrounded with cultivated hills, and 
from the bridge which crosses the broad channel 
of the Arno, the view is the most animated and 
elegant I ever saw. You see three or four 
bridges, one apparently supported by Corinthian 
pillars, and the white sails of the boats, relieved 
by the deep green of the forest, which comes to 
the water's edge, and the sloping hills covered 
with bright villas on every side. Domes and 
steeples rise on all sides, and the cleanliness is 
remarkably great. On the other side there are 
the foldings of the Vale of Arno above ; first 
the hills of olive and vine, then the chesnut 
woods, and then the blue and misty pine forests, 
which invest the aerial Apennines, that fade in 
the distance. I have seldom seen a city so lovely 
at first sight as Florence. 

We shall travel hence within a few hours, 
with the speed of the post, since the distance is 
190 miles, and we are to do it in three days, 
besides the half day, which is somewhat more 
than sixty miles a-day. We have now got a 
comfortable carriage and two mules, and, thanks 
to Paolo, have made a very decent bargain, com- 
prising everything, to Padua. I should say we had 
delightful fruit for breakfast — figs, very fine — and 
peaches, unfortunately gathered before they Were 
ripe, whose smell was like what one fancies of the 
wakening of Paradise flowers. 

Well, my dearest Mary, are you very lonely ? 
Tell me truth, my sweetest, do you ever cry ? I 
shall hear from you once at Venice, and once on 
my return here. If you love me you will keep 
up your spirits — and, at all events, tell me truth 
about it ; for, I assure you, I am not of a dis- 
position to be flattered by your sorrow, though I 
should be by your cheerfulness ; and, above all, by 
seeing such fruits of my absence as w r ere produced 
when we were at Geneva. What acquaintances 
have you made ? I might have travelled to Padua 



110 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



with i German, who had just come from Rome, 
and had scarce recovered from B malaria fever, 
caught in the Pontine Marshes, a week or two 

since ; and 1 OOnoeded to "s entreaties and 

to your absent suggestions, and omitted the 
opportunity, although I have no great faith in 
sueh species of contagion. It is not very hot — 
not atW too much so for my sensations ; and the 
only thing that incommodes me are the gnats at 
night, who roar like so many humming-tops in 
one's eaW— and I do not always find zanzariere. 
How is Willmouse and little Clara ? They must 
he kissed for me — and you must particularly 
rememher to speak my name to William, and 
see that he does not quite forget me before I 
return. Adieu — my dearest girl, I think that we 
shall soon meet. I shall write again from Venice. 
Adieu, dear Mary ! 

I have been reading the " Noble Kinsmen," in 
which, with the exception of that lovely scene, 
to which you added so much grace in reading 
to me, I have been disappointed. The Jailor's 
Daughter is a poor imitation, and deformed. The 
whole story wants moral ^crimination and 
modesty. I do not believe that Shakspere wrote 
a word of it. 

— ♦ — 

LETTER IX. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY, 

(BAGNf DI LUCCA). 

Venice, Sunday morning. 

My dearest Mary, — We arrived here last 
night at 12 o'clock, and it is now before breakfast 
the next morning. I can, of course, tell you 
nothing of the future ; and though I shall not 
close this letter till post time, yet I do not know 
exactly when that is. Yet, if you are very 
impatient, look along the letter and you will see 
another date, when I may have something to relate. 

I came from Padua hither in a gondola, and the 
gondoliere, among other things, without any hint 
on my part, began talking of Lord Byron. He 
said he was a giovinotto Inglese, with a nome stra/oa- 
gante, who lived very luxuriously, and spent great 
sums of money. This man, it seems, was one 
of Lord B.'s gondolieri. No sooner had we arrived 
at the inn, than the waiter began talking about 
him — said, that he frequented Mrs. H.'s coro- 
versazicmi very much. 

Our journey from Florence to Padua contained 
nothing which may not be related another time. 
At Padua, as I said, we took a gondola — and left 
it at three o'clock. These gondolas are the most 
beautiful and convenient boats in the world. They 
are finely carpeted and furnished with black, and 



painted Mack. The couches on which you lean 
arc extraordinarily soft, and are so disposed as to 
be the most comfortable to those who lean or sit. 
The windows have at will either Venetian plate- 
glass flowered, or Venetian blinds, or blinds of 
black cloth to shut out the light. The weather 
here is extremely cold — indeed, sometimes very 
painfully so, and yesterday it began to rain. We 
passed the laguna in the middle of the night in a 
most violent storm of wind, rain, and Ughtning. 
It was very curious to observe the elements above 
in a state of such tremendous convulsion, and the 
surface of the water almost calm ; for these 
lagunas, though five miles broad, a space enough 
in a storm to sink a gondola, are so shallow that 
the boatmen drive the boat along with a pole. 
The sea-water, furiously agitated by the wind, 
shone with sparkles like stars. Venice, now hidden 
and now disclosed by the driving rain, shone 
dimly with its fights. We were all this while safe 
and comfortable. Well, adieu, dearest : I shall, 
as Miss Byron says, resume the pen in the evening. 



Sunday Night, 5 o'Clock in the Morning. 
Well, I will try to relate everything in its order. 

* * * * * 

At three o'clock I called on Lord Byron : he was 
delighted to see me. 

He took me in his gondola across the laguna to 
a long sandy island, which defends Venice from the 
Adriatic. When we disembarked, we found his 
horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands 
of the sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in 
histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as 
to my affairs, and great professions of friendship 
and regard for me. He said, that if he had been 
in England at the time of the Chancery affair, he 
would have moved heaven and earth to have 
prevented such a decision. We talked of literary 
matters, his Fourth Canto, which, he says, is very 
good, and indeed repeated some stanzas of great 
energy to me. When we returned to his palace — 
which 

* * * (The letter is here torn). 

The Hoppners are the most amiable people I 
ever knew. They are much attached to each 
other, and have a nice little boy, seven months 
old. Mr. H. paints beautifully, and this excursion, 
which he has just put off, was an expedition to the 
Julian Alps, in this neighbourhood — for the sake 
of sketching, to procure winter employment. He 
has only a fortnight's leisure, and he has sacrificed 
two days of it to strangers whom he never saw 
before. Mrs. H. has hazel eyes and sweet looks. 
(Paper torn.) 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



Ill 



Well, but the time presses ; I am now going to 
the banker's to send you money for the journey, 
which I shall address to you at Florence, Post- 
office. Pray come instantly to Estc, where I shall 
be waiting in the utmost anxiety for your arrival. 
You can pack up directly you get this letter, and 
employ the next day on that. The day after, get 
up at four o'clock, and go post to Lucca, where 
you will arrive at six. Then take a vetturino for 
Florence to arrive the same evening. From 
Florence to Este is three days' vetturino journey 
— and you could not, I think, do it quicker by the 
post. Make Paolo take you to good inns, as we 
found very bad ones ; and pray avoid the Tre Mori 
at Bologna, perche vi sono cose inespressibili nei 
letti. I do not think you can, but try to get from 
Florence to Bologna in one day. Do not take the 
post, for it is not much faster and very expensive. 
I have been obliged to decide on all these tilings 
without you : I have done for the best — and, my 
own beloved Mary, you must soon come and scold 
me if I have done wrong, and ldss me if I have 
done right — for, I am sure, I do not know winch — 
and it is only the event that can show. We shall 
at least be saved the trouble of introduction, and 
have formed acquaintance with a lady who is so 
good, so beautiful, so angelically mild, that were 
she as wise too, she would be quite a ***. Her 
eyes are like a reflection of yours. Her manners 
are like yours when you know and like a person. 

Do you know, dearest, how this letter was 
written ? By scraps and patches, and interrupted 
every minute. The gondola is now come to take 
me .to the banker's. Este is a little place, and the 
house found without difficulty. I shall count four 
days for this letter : one day for packing, four for 
coming here — and on the ninth or tenth day we 
shall meet. 

I am too late for the post — but I send an express 
to overtake it. Enclosed is an order for fifty 
pounds. If you knew all that I had to do ! — 

Dearest love, be well, be happy, come to me — 
confide in your own constant and affectionate 

P. B. S. 

Kiss the blue-eyed darlings for me, and do not 
let William forget me. Clara cannot recollect 
me. 



LETTER X. 

To Mrs. SHELLEY, 

(I CAPPUCCINI — BSTB). 

Padua, mezzogiorno. 
My best Mary, — I found at Mount Selice a 
favourable opportunity for going to Venice, where 
I shall try to make some arrangement for you and 



little Ca. to come for some days, and shall meet 
you, if I do not write anything in the mean time, 
at Padua, on Thursday morning. C. says she is 
obliged to come to see the Medico, whom we 
missed this morning, and who lias appointed as 
the only hour at which he can be at leisure — half- 
past eight in the morning. You must, therefore, 
arrange matters so that you should come to the 
Stella d'Oro a little before that hour — a thing to 
be accomplished only by setting out at half-past 
three in the morning. You will by this means 
arrive at Venice very early in the day, and avoid 
the heat, which might be bad for the babe, and 
take the time, when she would at least sleep great 
part of the time. C. will return with the return 
carriage, and I shall meet you, or send to you at 
Padua. 

Meanwhile remember Charles the First — and 
do you be prepared to bring at least some of Myrra 
translated ; bring the book also with you, and the 
sheets of " Prometheus Unbound," which you wil 
find numbered from one to twenty-six on the table 
of the pavilion. My poor little Clara, how is she 
to-day \ Indeed I am somewhat uneasy about 
her, and though I feel secure that there is no 
danger, it would be very comfortable to have some 
reasonable person's opinion about her. The Medico 
at Padua is certainly a man in great practice, but 
I confess he does not satisfy me. 

Am I not like a wild swan to be gone so suddenly ? 
But, in fact, to set off alone to Venice required an 
exertion. I felt myself capable of making it, and 
I knew that you desired it. What will not be — 
if so it is destined — the lonely journey through 
that wide, cold France ? But we shall see. 

Adieu, my dearest love — remember Charles I. 
and Myrra. I have been already imagining how 
you will conduct some scenes. The second volume 
of St. Leon begins with this proud and true 
sentiment — " There is nothing which the human 
mind can conceive, which it may not execute." 
Shakspeare was only a human being. 

Adieu till Thursday. — Your ever affectionate 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XL 
To T. L. P. Esq. 

Estc, October 8, 1818. 
My dear P., — I have not written to you, I 
think, for six weeks. But I have been on the 
point of writing many times, and have often felt 
that I had many things to say. But I have not 
been without events to disturb and distract me, 
amongst which is the death of my little girl. She 
died of a disorder peculiar to the climate. We 



11-2 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



have all had bad spirits enough, and I, in addition, 
bad health. I intend to be bettor soon : then is 
HO malady, bodily or mental, which does not either 
kill or is "killed. 

We left the Baths of Lucca, I think, the day 
after 1 wrote to you— on a visit to Venice — partly 
for the sake of seeing the city. We made a very 
delightful acquaintance there with a Mr. and Mrs. 
Hoppner, the gentleman an Englishman, and the 
lady a Swissesse, mild and beautiful, and unpre- 
judiced, in the best sense of the word. The land 
attentions of these people made our short stay at 
Venice very pleasant. I saw Lord Byron, and 
really hardly knew him again ; he is changed into 
the liveliest and happiest-looking man I ever met. 
He read me the first canto of his " Don Juan " — 
a thing in the style of Beppo, but infinitely better, 
and dedicated to Southey, in ten or a dozen stanzas, 
more like a mixture of wormwood and verdigrease 
than satire. Venice is a wonderfully fine city. 
The approach to it over the laguna, with its domes 
and turrets glittering in a long line over the blue 
waves, is one of the finest architectural delusions 
in the world. It seems to have — and literally it 
has — its foundations in the sea. The silent streets 
are paved with water, and you hear nothing but 
the dashing of the oars, and the occasional cries 
of the gondolieri. I heard nothing of Tasso. The 
gondolas themselves are things of a most romantic 
and picturesque appearance ; I can only compare 
them to moths of which a coffin might have been 
the chrysalis. They are hung with black, and 
painted black, and carpeted with grey ; they curl 
at the prow and stern, and at the former there is 
a nondescript beak of shining steel, which glitters 
at the end of its long black mass. 

The Doge's palace, with its library, is a fine 
monument of aristocratic power. I saw the 
dungeons, where these scoundrels used to torment 
their victims. They are of three kinds — . one 
adjoining the place of trial, where the prisoners 
destined to immediate execution were kept. I 
could not descend into them, because the day 
on which I visited it, was festa. Another under 
the leads of the palace, where the sufferers were 
roasted to death or madness by the ardours of 
an Italian sun : and others called the Pozzi — or 
wells, deep underneath, and communicating with 
those on the roof by secret passages — where the 
prisoners were confined sometimes half up to their 
middles in stinking water. When the French came 
here, they found only one old man in the dungeons, 
and he could not speak. But Venice, which was 
once a tyrant, is now the next worse thing, a slave ; 
for in fact it ceased to be free, or worth our regret 
as a nation, from the moment that the oligarchy 



usurped the rights of the people. Yet, I do not 
imagine that it was ever so degraded as it has 
been since the French, and especially the Austrian 
yoke. The Austrians take sixty per cent, in 
taxes, and impose free quarters on the inhabitants. 
A horde of German soldiers, as vicious and more 
disgusting than the Venetians themselves, insult 
these miserable people. I had no conception of 
the excess to which avarice, cowardice, super- 
stition, ignorance, passionless lust, and all the 
inexpressible brutalities which degrade human 
nature, could be carried, until I had passed a few 
days at Venice. 

We have been living this last month near the 
little town from which I date this letter, in a very 
pleasant villa which has been lent to us, and we are 
now on the point of proceeding to Florence, Rome, 
and Naples — at which last city we shall spend the 
winter, and return northwards in the spring. 
Behind us here are the Euganean hills, not so 
beautiful as those of the Bagni di Lucca, with 
Arqua, where Petrarch's house and tomb are 
religiously preserved and visited. At the end of 
our garden is an extensive Gothic castle, now the 
habitation of owls and bats, where the Medici 
family resided before they came to Florence. 
We see before us the wide flat plains of Lombardy, 
in which we see the sun and moon rise and set, 
and the evening star, and all the golden mag- 
nificence of autumnal clouds. But I reserve 
wonder for Naples. 

I have been writing — and indeed have just 
finished the first act of a lyric and classical drama, 
to be called "Prometheus Unbound." Will you 
tell me what there is in Cicero about a drama 
supposed to have been written by ^Eschylus 
under this title. 

I ought to say that I have just read Malthus 
in a French translation. Malthus is a very clever 
man, and the world would be a great gainer if 
it would seriously take his lessons into con- 
sideration, if it were capable of attending seriously 
to anything but mischief — but what on earth 
does he mean by some of his inferences ? 

Yours ever faithfully, 

P. B. S. 

I will write again from Rome and Florence — 
in better spirits, and to more agreeable purpose, 
I hope. You saw those beautiful stanzas in the 
fourth canto about the Nymph Egeria. Well, I 
did not whisper a word about nympholepsy : I 
hope you acquit me — and I hope you will not 
carry delicacy so far as to let this suppress 
anything nympholeptic. 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



LETTER XII. 
To T. L. P. Esq. 

Ferrara, Nov. 8th, 1818. 

My dear P. — We left Este yesterday on our 
journey towards Naples. The roads were par- l 
ticularly bad ; we have, therefore, accomplished 
only two days' journey, of eighteen and twenty- i 
four miles each, and you may imagine that our 
horses must be tolerably good ones, to drag our 
carriage, with five people and heavy luggage, 
through deep and clayey roads. The roads are, 
however, good during the rest of the way. 

The country is flat, but intersected by lines of 
wood, trellised with vines, whose broad leaves are 
now stamped with the redness of their decay. 
Every here and there one sees people employed in 
agricultural labours, and the plough, the harrow, 
or the cart, drawn by long teams of milk-white or 
dove-coloured oxen of immense size and exquisite 
beauty. This, indeed, might be the country of 
Pasiphaes. In one farm-yard I was shown sixty- 
three of these lovely oxen, tied to their stalls, in 
excellent condition. A farm-yard m this part of 
Italy is somewhat different from one in England. 
First, the house, which is large and high, with 
strange-looking unpainted window-shutters, gene- 
rally closed, and dreary beyond conception. The 
farm-yard and out-buildings, however, are usually 
in the neatest order. The threshing-floor is not 
under cover, but like that described in the Georgics, 
usually flattened by a broken column, and neither 
the mole, nor the toad, nor the ant, can find on its 
area a crevice for their dwelling. Around it, at 
this season, are piled the stacks of the leaves and 
stalks of Indian com, which has lately been 
threshed and dried upon its surface. At a little 
distance are vast heaps of many-coloured zueche 
or pumpkins, some of enormous size, piled as 
winter food for the hogs. There are turkeys, too, 
and fowls wandering about, and two or three dogs, 
who bark with a sharp hylactism. The people who 
are occupied with the care of these things seem 
neither ill-clothed or ill-fed, and the blunt incivi- 
lity of their manners has an English air with it, 
very discouraging to those who are accustomed to 
the impudent and polished lying of the inhabitants 
of the cities. I should judge the agricultural 
resources of this country to be immense, since 
it can wear so flourishing an appearance, in spite of 
the enormous discouragements which the various 
tyranny of the governments inflicts on it. I 
ought to say that one of the farms belongs to a 
Jew banker at Venice, another Shylock. — We 
arrived late at the inn where I now write ; it was 



once the palace of a Venetian nobleman, and is 
now an excellent inn. To-morrow we are going to 
see the sights of Ferrara. 



Nov. 7- 
We have had heavy rain and thunder all night ; 
and the former still continuing, we went in tbe 
carriage about the town. We went first to look 
at the cathedral, but the beggars very soon made 
us sound a retreat ; so, whether, as it is said, 
there is a copy of a picture of Michael Angel > 
there or no, I cannot tell. At the public library 
we were more successful. This is, indeed, a 
magnificent establishment, containing, as they say, 
160,000 volumes. We saw some illuminated 
manuscripts of church music, with the verses of 
the psalms interlined between the square notes, 
each of which consisted of the most delicate 
tracery, in colours inconceivably vivid. They 
belonged to the neighbouring convent of Certosa, 
and are three or four hundred years old ; but their 
hues are as fresh as if they had been executed 
yesterday. The tomb of Ariosto occupies one end 
of the largest saloon of which the library is com- 
posed ; it is formed of various marbles, surmounted 
by an expressive bust of the poet, and subscribed 
with a few Latin verses, in a less miserable taste 
than those usually employed for similar purposes. 
But the most interesting exhibitions here, are the 
writings, &c, of Ariosto and Tasso, which are 
preserved, and were concealed from the undis- 
tinguishing depredations of the French with pious 
care. There is the arm-chair of Ariosto, an old 
plain wooden piece of furniture, the hard seat of 
which was once occupied by, but has now survived 
its cushion, as it has its master. I could fancy 
Ariosto sitting in it ; and the satires in his own 
handwriting which they unfold beside it, and the 
old bronze inkstand, loaded with figm'es, which 
belonged also to him, assists the willing delusion. 
This inkstand has an antique, rather than an 
ancient appearance. Three nymphs lean forth 
from the circumference, and on the top of the lid 
stands a cupid, winged and looking up, with a torch 
in one hand, his bow in the other, and his quiver 
beside him. A medal was bound round the skeleton 
of Ariosto, with his likeness impressed upon it. I 
cannot say I think it had much native expression ; 
but, perhaps, the artist was in fault. On the 
reverse is a hand, cutting with a pair of scissors 
the tongue from a serpent, upraised from the grass 
with this legend — Pro bono malum. What this 
reverse of the boasted Christian maxim means, or 
how it applies to Ariosto, either as a satirist or a 
serious writer, I cannot exactly tell. The cicerone 
attempted to explain, and it is to his commentary 



114 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



that n\v bewildering is probably due- if, indeed, 
the meaning be very plain, as is possibly the case. 

There is here a manuscript of the entire 
Gtaraaalemme Libera ta, written by Tasso's own 
hand ; a manuscript of some poems, written in 
prison, to the Duke Alfonso ; and the satires of 
Ariosto, written also by his own hand ; and the 
Fastor Fido of Guarini. The Gerusalemme, though 
it had evidently been copied and recopied, is inter- 
lined, particularly towards the end, with numerous 
corrections. The hand-writing of Ariosto is a 
small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I 
should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed 
energy of mind ; that of Tasso is large, free, and 
flowing, except that there is a checked expression 
in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters 
into a smaller compass than one expected from the 
beginning of the word. It is the symbol of an 
intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its 
own depth, and admonished to return by the 
chillness of the waters of oblivion striking upon its 
adventurous feet. You know I always seek in 
what I see the manifestation of something beyond 
the present and tangible object ; and as we do not 
agree in physiognomy, so we may not agree now. 
But my business is to relate my own sensations, 
and not to attempt to inspire others with them. 
Some of the MSS. of Tasso were sonnets to his 
persecutor, which contain a great deal of what 
is called flattery. If Alfonso's ghost were asked 
how he felt those praises now, I wonder what he 
would say. But to me there is much more to pity 
than to condemn in these entreaties and praises 
of Tasso. It is as a bigot prays to and praises 
his god, whom he knows to be the most remorse- 
less, capricious, and inflexible of tyrants, but whom 
he knows also to be omnipotent. Tasso's situation 
was widely different from that of any persecuted 
being of the present day ; for, from the depth 
of dungeons, public opinion might now at length be 
awakened to an echo that would startle the 
oppressor. But then there was no hope. There 
is something irresistibly pathetic to me in the sight 
of Tasso's own hand- writing, moulding expressions 
of adulation and entreaty to a deaf and stupid 
tyrant, in an age when the most heroic virtue 
would have exposed its possessor to hopeless 
persecution, and — such is the alliance between 
virtue and genius — which unoffending genius could 
not escape. 

We went afterwards to see his prison in the 
hospital of Sant' Anna, and I enclose you a piece 
of the wood of the very door, which for seven 
years and three months divided this glorious being 
from the air and the light which had nourished in 
him those influences which he has communicated, 



through his poetry, to thousands. The dungeon 
is low and dark, and, when I say that it is really a 
very decent dungeon, I speak as one who has seen 
the prisons in the doges' palace of Venice. But it 
is a horrible abode for the coarsest and meanest 
tiling that ever wore the shape of man, much more 
for one of delicate susceptibilities and elevated 
fancies. It is low, and has a grated window, and 
being sunk some feet below the level of the earth, 
is full of unwholesome damps. In the darkest 
corner is a mark in the wall where the chains were 
rivetted, which bound him hand and foot. After 
some time, at the instance of some Cardinal, his 
friend, the Duke allowed his victim a fire-place ; 
the mark where it was walled up yet remains. 

At the entrance of the Liceo, where the library 
is, we were met by a penitent ; his form was 
completely enveloped in a ghost-like drapery of 
white flannel ; his bare feet were sandalled ; and 
there was a kind of net-work visor drawn over 
his eyes, so as entirely to conceal his face. I 
imagine that this man had been adjudged to 
suffer this penance for some crime known only 
to himself and his confessor, and this kind of 
exhibition is a striking instance of the power of 
the Catholic superstition over the human mind. 
He passed, rattling his wooden box for charity.* 

Adieu. — You will hear from me again before I 
arrive at Naples. 

Yours, ever sincerely, 
P. B. S. 



LETTER XIII. 
To T. L. P., Esq. 

Bologna, Monday, Nov. 9th, 1818. 
My dear P, — I have seen a quantity of things 
here — churches, palaces, statues, fountains, and 
pictures ; and my brain is at this moment like 
a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or 
a commonplace-book. I will try to recollect 
something of what I have seen ; for, indeed, it 
requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. First, 
we went to the cathedral, which contains nothing 
remarkable, except a kind of shrine, or rather a 
marble canopy, loaded with sculptures, and 
supported on four marble columns. We went 
then to a palace — I am sure I forget the name of 
it — where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of 
course, in a picture gallery you see three hundred 
pictures you forget, for one you remember. I 
remember, however, an interesting picture by 
Guido, of the Rape of Proserpine, in which 
Proserpine casts back her languid and half- 



* These penitents ask alms, to be spent in masses for the 
souls in purgatory. M. S. 



LKTTERS FROM ITALY. 



115 



unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had 
left ungathered in the fields of Enna. There was 
an exquisitely executed piece of Correggio, ahout 
four saints, one of whom seemed to have a pet 
dragon in a leash. I was told that it was the 
devil who was bound in that style — but who can 
make anything of four saints i For what can 
they be supposed to be about ? There was one 
painting, indeed, by this master, Christ beatified, 
inexpressibly fine. It is a half figure, seated on 
a mass of clouds, tinged with an etherial, rose- 
like lustre ; the arms are expanded ; the whole 
frame seems dilated with expression ; the coun- 
tenance is heavy, as it were, with the weight of 
the rapture of the spirit ; the lips parted, but 
scarcely parted, with the breath of intense but 
regulated passion ; the eyes are calm and be- 
nignant ; the whole features harmonised in majesty 
and sweetness. The hair is parted on the forehead, 
and falls in heavy locks on each side. It is 
motionless, but seems as if the faintest breath 
would move it. The colouring, I suppose, must 
be very good, if I could remark and understand 
it. The sky is of a pale aerial orange, like the 
tints of latest sunset ; it does not seem painted 
around and beyond the figure, but everything 
seems to have absorbed, and to have been 
penetrated by its hues. I do not think we saw 
any other of Correggio, but this specimen gives 
me a very exalted idea of his powers. 

We went to see heaven knows how many more 
palaces — Ranuzzi, Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If 
you want Italian names for any purpose, here 
they are ; I should be glad of them if I was 
writing a novel. I saw many more of Guido. 
One, a Samson drinking water out of an ass's 
jaw-bone, in the midst of the slaughtered Phi- 
listines. Why he is supposed to do this, God, 
who gave him this jaw-bone, alone knows — but 
certain it is, that the painting is a very fine one. 
The figure of Samson stands in strong relief in 
the foreground, coloured, as it were, in the hues of 
human life, and full of strength and elegance. 
Round him he the Philistines in all the attitudes 
of death. One prone, with the slight convulsion 
of pain just passing from his forehead, whilst on 
his lips and chin death lies as heavy as sleep. 
Another leaning on his arm, with his hand, white 
and motionless, hanging out beyond. In the 
distance, more dead bodies ; and, still further 
beyond, the blue sea and the blue mountains, and 
one white and tranquil sail. 

There is a Murder of the Innocents, also, by 
Guido, finely coloured, with much fine expression 
— but the subject is very horrible, and it seemed 
deficient in strength — at least, you require the 



highest ideal energy, the most poetical and exalted 

conception of the subject, to reconcile you to such a 
contemplation. There was a Jesus Christ crucified, 
by the same, very fine. One gets tired, indeed, 
whatever may be the conception and execution of 
it, of seeing that monotonous and agonised form 
for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of 
torture. But the Magdalen, clinging to the c 
with the look of passive and gentle despair 
beaming from beneath her bright flaxen hair, and 
the figure of St. John, with his looks uplifted in 
passionate compassion ; his hands clasped, and his 
fingers twisting themselves together, as it were, 
with involuntary anguish ; Ins feet almost writhing 
up from the ground with the same sympathy ; and 
the whole of this arrayed in colours of a diviner 
nature, yet most like nature's self. Of the 
contemplation of this one would never weary. 

There was a " Fortune " too, of Guido ; a piece 
of mere beauty. There was the figure of Fortune 
on a globe, eagerly proceeding onwards, and Love 
was trying to catch her back by the hair, and her 
face was half turned towards him ; her long 
chesnut hair was floating in the stream of the wind, 
and threw its shadow over her fair forehead. Her 
hazel eyes were fixed on her pursuer, with a 
meaning look of playfulness, and a light smile was 
hovering on her lips. The colours which arrayed 
her delicate limbs were etherial and warm. 

But, perhaps, the most interesting of all the 
pictures of Guido which I saw was a Madonna 
Lattante. She is leaning over her child, and the 
maternal feelings with which she is pervaded are 
shadowed forth on her soft and gentle countenance, 
and in her simple and affectionate gestures — there 
is what an unfeeling observer would call a dullness 
in the expression of her face ; her eyes are almost 
closed ; her lip depressed ; there is a serious, and 
even a heavy relaxation, as it were, of all the 
muscles which are called into action by ordinary 
emotions : but it is only as if the spirit of love, 
almost insupportable from its intensity, were 
brooding over and weighing down the soul, or 
whatever it is, without which the material frame 
is inanimate and inexpressive. 

There is another painter here, called Frances- 

chini, a Bolognese, who, though certainly very 

inferior to Guido, is yet a person of excellent 

powers. One entire church, that of Santa Catariua, 

is covered by his works. I do not know whether 

any of Ins pictures have ever been seen in England. 

His colouring is less warm than that of Guido, but 

nothing can be more clear and delicate ; it is as if 

he could have dipped his pencil in the hues of 

some serenest and star-shining twilight. His 

forms have the same delicacy and aerial loveliness ; 
i2 



ne 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



their eyes are all bright with innocence and love ; 
their lips scarce divided by seme gentle and sweet 
emotion. His winged children are the loveliest 
ideal beings over created by the human mind. 
Those are generally, whether in the capacity of 
Cherubim or Cupid, accessories to the rest of the 
picture ; and the underplot of their lovely and 
infantine play is something almost pathetic, from 
the excess of its unpretending beauty. One of 
the best of his pieces is an Annunciation of the 
Virgin : — the Angel is beaming in beauty ; the 
Virgin, soft, retiring, and simple. 

We saw, besides, one picture of Raphael — St. 
Cecilia : this is in another and higher style ; you 
forget that it is a picture as you look at it ; and 
yet it is most unlike any of those things which we 
call reality. It is of the inspired and ideal kind, 
and seems to have been conceived and executed in 
a similar state of feeling to that which produced 
among the ancients those perfect specimens of 
poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models 
of succeeding generations. There is a unity and 
a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. 
The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such 
inspiration as produced her image in the painter's 
mind ; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up ; 
her chesnut hair flung back from her forehead — 
she holds an organ in her hands — her countenance, 
as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and 
rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm 
and radiant fight of fife. She is listening to the 
music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just 
ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround 
her evidently point, by their attitudes, towards 
ner ; particularly St. John, who, with a tender yet 
impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards 
her, languid with the depth of his emotion. At 
her feet lie various instruments of music, broken 
and unstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak ; 
it eclipses nature, yet it has all her truth and 
softness. 

We saw some pictures of Domenichino, Caracci, 
Albano, Guercino, Elizabetta Sirani. The two 
former, remember, I do not pretend to taste — 1 
cannot admire. Of the latter there are some 
beautiful Madonnas. There are several of Guercino, 
which they said were very fine. I dare say they 
were, for the strength and complication of his 
figures made my head turn round. One, indeed, 
was certainly powerful. It was the representation 
of the founder of the Carthusians exercising his 
austerities in the desert, with a youth as his atten- 
dant, kneeling beside him at an altar : on another 
akar stood a skull and a crucifix ; and around 
were the rocks and the trees of the wilderness. I 
never saw such a figure as this fellow. His face 



was wrinkled like a dried snake's skin, and 
drawn in long hard lines : his very hands were 
wrinkled. He looked like an animated mummy. 
He was clothed in a loose dress of death-coloured 
flannel, such as you might fancy a shroud might 
be, after it had wrapt a corpse a month or two. 
It had a yellow, pu trifled, ghastly hue, which it 
cast on all the objects around, so that the hands 
and face of the Carthusian and his companion 
were jaundiced by this sepulchral glimmer. Why 
write books against religion, when we may hang 
up such pictures ? But the world either will not 
or cannot see. The gloomy effect of this was 
softened, and, at the same time, its sublimity 
diminished, by the figure of the Virgin and Child 
in the sky, looking down with admiration on the 
monk, and a beautiful flying figure of an angel. 

Enough of pictures. I saw the place where 
Guido and his mistress, Elizabetta Sirani, were 
buried. This lady was poisoned at the age of 
twenty-six, by another lover, a rejected one of 
course. Our guide said she was very ugly, and 
that we might see her portrait to-morrow. 

Well, good-night, for the present. " To-morrow 
to fresh fields and pastures new." 



Nov. 16. 
To-day we first went to see those divine pictures 
of Raffael and Guido again, and then rode up the 
mountains, behind this city, to visit a chapel 
dedicated to the Madonna. It made me melan- 
choly to see that they had been varnishing and 
restoring some of these pictures, and that even 
some had been pierced by the French bayonets. 
These are symptoms of the mortality of man, and, 
perhaps, few of his works are more evanescent 
than paintings. Sculpture retains its freshness for 
twenty centuries — the Apollo and the Venus are 
as they were. But books are perhaps the only 
productions of man coeval with the human race. 
Sophocles and Shakspeare can be produced and 
reproduced for ever. But how evanescent are 
paintings ! and must necessarily be. Those of 
Zeuxis and Apelles are no more ; and perhaps they 
bore the same relation to Homer and iEschylus, 
that those of Guido and Raffael bear to Dante and 
Petrarch. There is one refuge from the des- 
pondency of this contemplation. The material 
part, indeed, of their works must perish, but 
they survive in the mind of man, and the remem- 
brances connected with them are transmitted 
from generation to generation. The poet embodies 
them in fiis creations ; the systems of philosophers 
are modelled to gentleness by their contemplation ; 
opinion, that legislator, is infected with their 
influence ; men become better and wiser ; and 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



17 



the unseen seeds are perhaps thus sown, which 
shall produce a plant more excellent even than 
that from which they fell. But all this might as 
well be said or thought at Marlow as Bologna. 

The chapel of the Madonna is a very pretty 
Corinthian building — very beautiful indeed. It 
commands a fine view of these fertile plains, the 
many-folded Apennines, and the city. I have just 
returned from a moonlight walk through Bologna. 
It is a city of colonnades, and the effect of 
moonlight is strikingly picturesque. There are 
two towers here — one 400 feet high — ugly things, 
built of brick, which lean both different ways ; 
and with the delusion of moonlight shadows, you 
might almost fancy that the city is rocked by an 
earthquake. They say they were built so on 
purpose ; but I observe in all the plain of 
Lombardy the church towers lean. 

Adieu. — God grant you patience to read this 
long letter, and courage to support the expectation 
of the next. Pray part them from the Cobbetts on 
your breakfast table — they may fight it out in your 
mind. 

Yours ever, most sincerely, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XIY. 
To T. L. P., Esq. 

Rome, November 20th, 1818. 

My dear P., — Behold me in the capital of the 
vanished world ! But I have seen nothing except 
St. Peter's and the Vatican, overlooking the city in 
the mist of distance, and the Dogana, where they 
took us to have our luggage examined, which is 
built between the ruins of a temple to Antoninus 
Pius. The Corinthian columns rise over the 
dwindled palaces of the modern town, and the 
wrought cornice is changed on one side, as it were, 
to masses of wave- worn precipices, which overhang 
you, far, far on high. 

I take advantage of this rainy evening, and 
before Rome has effaced all other recollections, to 
endeavour to recall the vanished scenes through 
which we have passed. We left Bologna, I forget 
on what day, and passing by Rimini, Fano, and 
Fohgno, along the Via Flaminia and Terni, have 
arrived at Rome after ten days' somewhat tedious-, 
but most interesting journey. The most remark- 
able things we saw were the Roman excavations 
in the rock, and the great waterfall of Terai. 
Of course you have heard that there are a 
Roman bridge and a triumphal arch at Rimini, 
and in what excellent taste they are built. The 
bridge is not unlike the Strand bridge, but more 
bold in proportion, and of course infinitely smaller. 



From Fano we left the coast of the Adriatic, and 
entered the Apennines, following the course of the 
Metaurus, the banks of which were the scene of 
the defeat of Asdrubal : and it is said (you can 
refer to the book) that Livy has given a very exact 
and animated description of it. I forget all about 
it, but shall look as soon as our boxes are opened. 
Following the river, the vale contracts, the banks 
of the river become steep and rocky, the forests of 
oak and ilex which overhang its emerald-coloured 
stream, cling to then.' abrupt precipices. About 
four miles from Fossombrone, the river forces for 
itself a passage between the walls and toppling pre- 
cipices of the loftiest Apennines, which are here 
rifted to their base, and undermined by the narrow 
and tumultuous torrent. It was a cloudy morning, 
and we had no conception of the scene that awaited 
us. Suddenly the low clouds were struck by the 
clear north wind, and like curtains of the finest 
gauze, removed one by one, were drawn from before 
the mountain, whose heaven-cleaving pinnacles and 
black crags overhanging one another, stood at length 
defined in the light of day. The road runs parallel 
to the river, at a considerable height, and is carried 
through the mountain by a vaulted cavern. The 
marks of the chisel of the legionaries of the Roman 
Consul are yet evident. 

We passed on day after day, until we came to 
Spoleto, I think the most romantic city I ever saw. 
There is here an aqueduct of astonishing elevation, 
which unites two rocky mountains, — there is the 
path of a torrent below, whitening the green dell 
with its broad and barren track of stones, and 
above there is a castle, apparently of great strength 
and of tremendous magnitude, which overhangs the 
city, and whose marble bastions are perpendicular 
with the precipice. I never saw a more impres- 
sive picture ; in which the shapes of nature are of 
the grandest order, but over which the creations 
of man, sublime from their antiquity and great- 
ness, seem to predominate. The castle was built 
by Belisarius or Narses, I forget which, but was of 
that epoch. 

From Spoleto we went to Terni, and saw the 
cataract of the Yelino. The glaciers of Montan- 
vert and the source of the Arveiron is the grandest 
spectacle I ever saw. This is the second. Imagine 
a river sixty feet in breadth, with a vast volume of 
waters, the outlet of a great lake among the higher 
mountains, falling 300 feet into a sightless gulf 
of snow-white vapour, which bursts up for ever and 
for ever from a circle of black crags, and thence 
leaping downwards, made five or six other cata- 
racts, each fifty or a hundred feet high, which, 
exhibit, on a smaller scale, and with beautiful and 
sublime variety, the same appearances. But words 



118 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



(ami tar loss could painting) will not express it. 
Stand upon the brink ot the platform of cliff, which 
is directly opposite. Yon see the over-moving 
water stream down. It comes in thick and tawny 
folds, fluking off like solid snow gliding down a 
mountain. It does not seem hollow within, but 
without it is unequal, like the folding of linen 
thrown carelessly down ; your eye follows it, and it 
is lost below ; not in the black rocks which gird it 
around, but in its own foam and spray, in the cloud- 
like vapours boiling up from below, which is not 
like rain, nor mist, nor spray, nor foam, but water, 
in a shape wholly unlike anything I ever saw 
before. It is as white as snow, but thick and 
unpenetrable to the eye. The very imagination is 
bewildered in it. A thunder comes up from the 
abyss wonderful to hear ; for, though it ever sounds, 
it is never the same, but, modulated by the changing 
motion, rises and falls intermittingly ; we passed 
half an hour in one spot looking at it, and 
thought but a few minutes had gone by. The 
surrounding scenery is, in its kind, the loveliest 
and most sublime that can be conceived. In our 
first walk we passed through some olive groves, of 
large and ancient trees, whose hoary and twisted 
trunks leaned in all directions. We then crossed 
a path of orange trees by the river side, laden with 
their golden fruit, and came to a forest of ilex of 
a large size, whose evergreen and acorn-bearing 
boughs were intertwined over our winding path. 
Around, hemming in the narrow vale, were pinna- 
cles of lofty mountains of pyramidical rock clothed 
with all evergreen plants and trees ; the vast pine 
whose feathery foliage trembled in the blue air, 
the ilex, that ancestral inhabitant of these moun- 
tains, the arbutus with its crimson-coloured fruit 
and glittering leaves. After an hour's walk, we 
came beneath the cataract of Terni, within the 
distance of half a mile ; nearer you cannot approach, 
for the Nar, which has here its confluence with the 
Velino, bars the passage. We then crossed the 
river formed by this confluence, over a narrow 
natural bridge of rock, and saw the cataract from 
the platform I first mentioned. We think of 
spending some time next year near this waterfall. 
The inn is very bad, or we should have stayed there 
longer. 

We came from Terni last night to a place called 
Nepi, and to-day arrived at Rome across the much- 
belied Campagna di Roma, a place I confess infi- 
nitely to my taste. It is a flattering picture of 
Bagshot Heath. But then there are the Apennines 
on one side, and Rome and St. Peter's on the 
other, and it is intersected by perpetual dells 
clothed with arbutus and ilex. 

Adieu —very faithfully yours, P. B. S. 



LETTER XV. 
To T. L. P., Esq, 

Naples, December 22, 1818. 

My dear P., — I have received a letter from you 
here, dated November 1st ; you see the recipro- 
cation of letters from the term of our travels is 
more slow. I entirely agree with what you say 
about Childe Harold. The spirit in which it is 
written is, if insane, the most wicked and mis- 
chievous insanity that ever was given forth. It is 
a kind of obstinate and self-willed folly, in which 
he hardens himself. I remonstrated with him in 
vain on the tone of mind from which such a view 
of things alone arises. For its real root is very 
different from its apparent one. Nothing can be 
less sublime than the true source of these expres- 
sions of contempt and desperation. The fact is, 
that first, the Italian women with whom he asso- 
ciates, are perhaps the most contemptible of all 
who exist under the moon — the most ignorant, the 
most disgusting, the most bigoted; * * * * an 
ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. 
Well, L. B. is familiar with the lowest sort of 
these women, the people his gondolieri pick up in 
the streets. He associates with wretches who 
seem almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy 
of man, and who do not scruple to avow practices 
which are not only not named, but I believe seldom 
even conceived in England. He says he disap- 
proves, but he endures. He is heartily and deeply 
discontented with himself; and contemplating in 
the distorted mirror of his own thoughts the nature 
and the destiny of man, what can he behold but 
objects of contempt and despair ? But that he is 
a great poet, I think the address to Ocean proves. 
And he has a certain degree of candour while you 
talk to him, but unfortunately it does not outlast 
your departure. No, I do not doubt, and, for his 
sake, I ought to hope, that his present career must 
end soon in some violent circumstance. 

Since I last wrote to you, I have seen the ruins 
of Rome, the Vatican, St. Peter's, and all the 
miracles of ancient and modern art contained in 
that majestic city. The impression of it exceeds 
anything I have ever experienced in my travels. 
We stayed there only a week, intending to return 
at the end of February, and devote two or three 
months to its mines of inexhaustible contemplation, 
to which period I refer you for a minute account 
of it. We visited the Forum and the ruins of the 
Coliseum every day. The Coliseum is unlike any 
work of human hands I ever saw before. It is 
of enormous height and circuit, and the arches 
built of massy stones are piled on one another, 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



119 



and jut into the blue air, shattered into the forma 
of overhanging rocks. It has been changed by 
time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky 
hills overgrown by the wild olive, the myrtle, and 
the fig-tree, and threaded by little paths, which 
wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable 
galleries : the copsewood overshadows you as you 
wander through its labyrinths, and the wild weeds 
of this climate of flowers bloom under your feet. 
The arena is covered with grass, and pierces, like 
the skirts of a natural plain, the chasms of the 
broken arches around. But a small part of the 
exterior circumference remains — it is exquisitely 
light and beautiful ; and the effect of the perfection 
of its architecture, adorned with ranges of Corin- 
thian pilasters, supporting a bold cornice, is such 
as to diminish the effect of its greatness. The 
interior is all ruin. I can scarcely believe that 
when encrusted with Dorian marble and orna- 
mented by columns of Egyptian granite, its effect 
could have been so sublime and so impressive as 
in its present state. It is open to the sky, and it 
was the clear and sunny weather of the end of 
November in this climate when we visited it, day 
after day. 

Near it is the arch of Constantine, or rather the 
arch of Trajan ; for the servile and avaricious senate 
of degraded Rome ordered, that the monument of 
his predecessor should be demolished in order to 
dedicate one to the Christian reptile, who had erept 
among the blood of his murdered family to the 
supreme power. It is exquisitely beautiful and 
perfect. The Forum is a plain in the midst of 
Rome, a kind of desert full of heaps of stones and 
pits ; and though so near the habitations of men, 
is the most desolate place you can conceive. The 
ruins of temples stand in and around it, shattered 
columns and ranges of others complete, supporting 
cornices of exquisite workmanship, and vast vaults 
of shattered domes distinct with regular compart- 
ments, once filled with sculptures of ivory or brass. 
The temples, of Jupiter, and Concord, and Peace, 
and the Sun, and the Moon, and Vesta, are all 
within a short distance of this spot. Behold the 
wrecks of what a great nation once dedicated to 
the abstractions of the mind ! Rome is a city, as 
it were, of the dead, or rather of those who cannot 
die, and who survive the puny generations which 
inhabit and pass over the spot which they have 
made sacred to eternity. In Rome, at least in the 
first enthusiasm of your recognition of ancient 
time, you see nothing of the Italians. The nature 
of the city assists the delusion, for its vast and 
antique walls describe a circumference of sixteen 
miles, and thus the population is thinly scattered 
over this space, nearly as great as London. Wide 



wild fields are enclosed within it, and there are 
grassy lanes and copses winding among the ru : ns, 
and a great green hill, lonely and bare, which 
overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the modern 
palaces are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress, 
and pine, and the neglected walks are overgrown 
with weeds. The English burying-place is a green 
slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of 
Cestius, and is, I think, the most beautiful and 
solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To see the sun 
shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first 
visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the 
whispering of the wind among the leaves of the 
trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, 
and the soil winch is stirring in the sun-warm 
earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women 
and young people who were buried there, one 
might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they 
seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so 
it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion. 

I have told you little about Rome ; but I reserve 
the Pantheon, and St. Peter's, and the Vatican, 
and Raffael, for my return. About a fortnight 

ago I left Rome, and Mary and C followed in 

three days, for it was necessary to procure lodgings 
here without alighting at an inn. From my peculiar 
mode of travelling I saw little of the country, but 
could just observe that the wild beauty of the 
scenery and the barbarous ferocity of the inhabitants 
progressively increased. On entering Naples, the 
first circumstance that engaged my attention was 
an assassination. A youth ran out of a shop, 
pursued by a woman with a bludgeon, and a man 
armed with a knife. The man overtook him, and 
with one blow in the neck laid him dead in the 
road. On my expressing the emotions of horror 
and indignation which I felt, a Calabrian priest, 
who travelled with me, laughed heartily, and 
attempted to quiz me, as what the English call 
a flat. I never felt such an inclination to beat 
any one. Heaven knows I have little power, but 
he saw that I looked extremely displeased, and 
was silent. This same man, a fellow of gigantic 
strength and stature, had expressed the most 
frantic terror of robbers on the road ; he cried at 
the sight of my pistol, and it had been with great 
difficulty that the joint exertions of myself and the 
vetturino had quieted his hysterics. 

But external nature in these delightful regions 
contrasts with and compensates for the deformity 
and degradation of humanity. We have a lodging 
divided from the sea by the royal gardens, and 
from our windows we see perpetually the blue 
waters of the bay, forever changing, yet forever 
the same, and encompassed by the mountainous 
island of Capreae, the lofty peaks which overhang 



120 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



Salerno, ami tlio woody bill of Posilipo, whoso 
promontories hide from as Misenum and tho lofty 

islo Inarime,* which, with its divided summit, 
forms the opposite horn of tho bay. From the 
pleasant walks of the garden we Bee Vesuvius ; a 

Bmoke by day and a fixe by night is seen upon its 
summit, and the glassy sea often reflects its light 
or shadow. Tho climate is delicious. We sit 
without a tiro, with tho windows open, and have 
almost all the productions of an English summer. 
The weather is usually like what Wordsworth 
calls " tho first fine day of March ;" sometimes 
very much wanner, though perhaps it wants that 
" each minute sweeter than before," which gives 
an intoxicating sweetness to the awakening of the 
earth from its winter's sleep in England. We 
have made two excursions, one to Baiae and one 
to Vesuvius, and we propose to visit, successively, 
the islands, Pcestum, Pompeii, and Beneventum. 

We set off an horn.' after sunrise one radiant 
morning in a little boat ; there was not a cloud in 
the sky, nor a wave upon the sea, which was so 
translucent that you could see the hollow caverns 
clothed with the glaucous sea-moss, and the leaves 
and branches of those delicate weeds that pave the 
unequal bottom of the water. As noon approached, 
the heat, and especially the light, became intense. 
We passed Posilipo, and came first to the eastern 
point of the bay of Puzzoli, which is within the 
great bay of Naples, and which again encloses that 
of Baise. Here are lofty rocks and craggy islets, 
with arches and portals of precipice standing in 
the sea, and enormous caverns, which echoed 
faintly with the murmur of the languid tide. This 
is called La Scuola di Virgilio. We then went 
directly across to the promontory of Misenum, 
leaving the precipitous island of Nisida on the 
right. Here we were conducted to see the Mare 
Morto, and the Elysian fields ; the spot on which 
Virgil places the scenery of the Sixth ^Eneid. 
Though extremely beautiful, as a lake, and woody 
liills, and this divine sky must make it, I confess 
my disappointment. The guide showed us an 
autique cemetery, where the niches used for 
placing the cinerary urns of the dead yet remain. 
We then coasted the bay of Baiae to the left, in 
which we saw many picturesque and interesting 
ruins ; but I have to remark that we never disem- 
barked but we were disappointed — while from the 
boat the effect of the scenery was inexpressibly 
delightful. The colours of the water and the air 
breathe over all things here the radiance of their 
own beauty. After passing the bay of Baiee, and 
observing the ruins of its antique grandeur stand- 

* The ancient name of Ischia. 



ing like rocks in the transparent sea under our 
boat, we landed to visit lake Avernus. We passed 
through the cavern of the Sibyl (not Virgil's Sybil) 
which pierces one of the hills which circumscribe 
the lake, and came to a calm and lovely basin of 
water, surrounded by dark woody hills, and pro- 
foundly solitary. Some vast ruins of the temple of 
Pluto stand on a lawny hill on one side of it, and 
are reflected in its windless mirror. It is far more 
beautiful than the Elysian fields — but there are 
all the materials for beauty in the latter, and the 
Avernus was once a chasm of deadly and pesti- 
lential vapours. About half a mile from Avernus, 
a high hill, called Monte Novo, was thrown up by 
volcanic fire. 

Passing onward we came to Pozzoli, the ancient 
Dicsearchea, where there are the columns remain- 
ing of a temple to Serapis, and the wreck of an 
enormous amphitheatre, changed, like the Coliseum, 
into a natural hill of the overteeming vegetation. 
Here also is the Solfatara, of which there is a 
poetical description in the Civil War of Petronius, 
beginning — " Est locus," and in which the verses of 
the poet are infinitely finer than what he describes, 
for it is not a very curious place. After seeing these 
things w r e returned by moonlight to Naples in our 
boat. What colours there were in the sky, what 
radiance in the evening star, and how the moon 
was encompassed by a fight unknown to our 
regions ! 

Our next excursion was to Vesuvius. We went 
to Resina in a carriage, where Mary and I mounted 

mules, and C was carried in a chair on the 

shoulders of four men, much "ike a member of par- 
liament after he has gained his election, and looking, 
with less reason, quite as frightened. So we arrived 
at the hermitage of San Salvador, where an old 
hermit, belted with rope, set forth the plates for 
our refreshment. 

Vesuvius is, after the Glaciers, the most impres- 
sive exhibition of the energies of nature I ever saw. 
It has not the immeasurable greatness, the over- 
powering magnificence, nor, above all, the radiant 
beauty of the glaciers ; but it has all their character 
of tremendous and irresistible strength. From 
Resina to the hermitage you wind up the moun- 
tain, and cross a vast stream of hardened lava, 
which is an actual image of the waves of the sea, 
changed into hard black stone by enchantment. 
The lines of the boiling flood seem to hang in the 
ah', and it is difficult to believe that the billows 
which seem hurrying down upon you are not actually 
in motion. This plain was once a sea of liquid fire. 
From the hermitage we crossed another vast stream 
of lava, and then went on foot up the cone — this is 
the only part of the ascent in which there is any 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



121 



difficulty, and that difficulty has been much ex- 
aggerated. It is composed of rocks of lava, and 
declivities of ashes ; by ascending the former and 
descending the latter, there is very little fatigue. 
On the summit is a kind of irregular plain, the 
most horrible chaos that can be imagined ; riven 
into ghastly chasms, and heaped up with tumuli of 
great stones and cinders, and enormous rocks 
blackened and calcined, which had been thrown 
from the volcano upon one another in terrible con- 
fusion. In the midst stands the conical hill from 
which volumes of smoke, and the fountains of 
liquid fire, are rolled forth forever. The mountain 
is at present in a slight state of eruption ; and a 
thick heavy white smoke is perpetually rolled out, 
interrupted by enormous columns of an impene- 
trable black bituminous vapour, which is hurled up, 
fold after fold, into the sky with a deep hollow 
sound, and fiery stones are rained down from its 
darkness, and a black shower of ashes fell even 
where we sat. The lava, like the glacier, creeps on 
perpetually, with a crackling sound as of suppressed 
fire. There are several springs of lava ; and hi 
one place it rushes precipitously over a high crag, 
rolling down the half-molten rocks and its own 
overhanging waves ; a cataract of quivering fire. 
We approached the extremity of one of the rivers 
of lava ; it is about twenty feet in breadth and ten 
in height ; and as the inclined plane was not rapid, 
its motion was very slow. We saw the masses of 
its dark exterior surface detach themselves as it 
moved, and betray the depth of the liquid flame. 
In the day the fire is but slightly seen ; you only 
observe a tremulous motion in the air, and 
streams and fountains of white sulphurous smoke. 
At length we saw the sun sink between Caprese 
and Inarime, and, as the darkness increased, the 
effect of the fire became more beautiful. We were, 
as it were, surrounded by streams and cataracts of 
the red and radiant fire ; and in the midst, from the 
column of bituminous smoke shot up into the air, 
fell the vast masses of rock, white with the light of 
then* intense heat, leaving behind them through the 
dark vapour trains of splendour. We descended 
by torch-light, and I should have enjoyed the 
scenery on my return, but they conducted me, I 
know not how, to the hermitage in a state of intense 
bodily suffering, the worst effect of which was spoil- 
ing the pleasure of Mary and C . Our guides on 

the occasion were complete savages. You have no 
idea of the horrible cries which they suddenly utter, 
no one knows why ; the clamour, the vociferation, 

the tumult. C in her palanquin suffered most 

from it ; and when I had gone on before, they 
threatened to leave her in the middle of the road, 
which they would have done had not my Italian 



servant promised them a beating, after which they 
became quiet. Nothing, however, ean be mure 
picturesque than the gestures and the physiog- 
nomies of these savage people. And when, hi the 
darkness of night, they unexpectedly begin to sing 
in chorus some fragments of their wild but sweet 
national music, the effect is exceedingly fine. 

Since I wrote this, I have seen the museum of 
this city. Such statues ! There is a Venus ; an 
ideal shape, of the most winning loveliness. A 
Bacchus, more sublime than any living being. A 
Satyr, making love to a youth : in which the 
expressed life of the sculpture, and the inconceiv- 
able beauty of the form of the youth, overcome one's 
repugnance to the subject. There are multitudes 
of wonderfully fine statues found in Herculaneum 
and Pompeii. We are going to see Pompeii the 
first day that the sea is waveless. Herculaneum is 
almost filled up; no more excavations are made ; the 
king bought the ground and built a palace upon it. 

You don't see much of Hunt. I wish you could 
contrive to see him when you go to town, and ask 
him what he means to answer to Lord Byron's 
invitation. He has now an opportunity, if he likes, 
of seeing Italy. What do you think of joining his 
party, and paying us a visit next year ; I mean as 
soon as the reign of winter is dissolved ? Write to 
me your thoughts upon this. I cannot express to 
you the pleasure it would give me to welcome such 
a party. 

I have depression enough of spirits and not good 
health, though I believe the warm air of Naples 
does me good. We see absolutely no one here. 

Adieu, my dear P . 

Affectionately your friend, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XVI. 
To T. L. P., Esq. 

Naples, Jan. 26th, 1819. 
My dear P., — Your two letters arrived within 
a few days of each other, one being directed to 
Naples, and the other to Livorno. They are more 
welcome visitors to me than mine can be to you. 
I writing as from sepulchres, you from the habi- 
tations of men yet unburied ; though the sexton, 
Castlereagh, after having dug then- grave, stands 
with his spade in his hand, evidently doubting 
whether he will not be forced to occupy it himself. 
Your news about the bank-note trials is excellent 
good. Do I not recognise in it the influence of 
Cobbett % You don't tell me what occupies Parlia- 
ment. I know you will laugh at my demand, and 
assure me that it is indifferent. Your pamphlet I 
want exceedingly to see. Your calculations in the 



122 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



Letter are clear, but require much oral explanation. 
You know 1 am an infernal arithmetician. If 

none but me had contemplated " lucenteraquc 
globum hmm, Titaniaque astra," the world would 
yet have doubted whether they were many hundred 
feet higher than the mountain tops. 

In my accounts of pictures and things, I am 
more pleased to interest you than the many ; and 
this is fortunate, because, in the first place, I have 
no idea of attempting the latter, and if I did 
attempt it, I should assuredly fail. A perception 
of the beautiful characterises those who differ from 
ordinary men, and those who can perceive it would 
not buy enough to pay the printer. Besides, 
I keep no journal, and the only records of my 
voyage will be the letters I send you. The bodily 
fatigue of standing for hours in galleries exhausts 
me ; I believe that I don't see half that I ought, 
on that account. And then we know nobody : 
and the common Italians are so sullen and stupid, 
it's impossible to get information from them. At 
Rome, where the people seem superior to any in 
Italy, I cannot fail to stumble on something more. 
0, if I had health, and strength, and equal spirits, 
what boundless intellectual improvement might I 
not gather in this wonderful country ! At present 
I write little else but poetry, and little of that. 
My first act of Prometheus is complete, and I 
think you would like it. I consider poetry very 
subordinate to moral and political science, and if I 
were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter ; 
for I can conceive a great work, embodying the 
discoveries of all ages, and harmonising the con- 
tending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. 
Far from me is such an attempt, and I shall be 
content, by exercising my fancy, to amuse myself, 
and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I 
can into the scale of that balance, which the Giant 
of Arthegall holds. 

Since you last heard from me, we have been to 
see Pompeii, and are waiting now for the return of 
spring weather, to visit, first, Psestum, and then 
the islands ; after which we shall return to Rome. 
I was astonished at the remains of this city ; I 
had no conception of anything so perfect yet 
remaining. My idea of the mode of its destruction 
was this : — First, an earthquake shattered it, and 
unroofed almost all its temples, and split its 
columns ; then a rain of light small pumice-stones 
fell ; then torrents of boiling water, mixed with 
ashes, filled up all its crevices. A wide, flat hill, 
from which the city was excavated, is now covered 
by thick woods, and you see the tombs and the 
theatres, the temples and the houses, surrounded 
by the uninhabited wilderness. We entered the 
town from the side towards the sea, and first saw 



two theatres ; one more magnificent than the 
other, strewn with the ruins of the white marble 
which formed their seats and cornices, wrought 
with deep, bold sculpture. In the front, between 
the stage and the seats, is the circular space, 
occasionally occupied by the chorus. The stage is 
very narrow, but long, and divided from this space 
by a narrow enclosure parallel to it, I suppose for 
the orchestra. On each side are the consuls' 
boxes, and below, in the theatre at Herculaneum, 
were found two equestrian statues of admirable 
workmanship, occupying the same place as the 
great bronze lamps did at Drury Lane. The 
smallest of the theatres is said to have been comic, 
though I should doubt. From both you see, as you 
sit on the seats, a prospect of the most wonderful 
beauty. 

You then pass through the ancient streets ; 
they are very narrow, and the houses rather small, 
but all constructed on an admirable plan, espe- 
cially for this climate. The rooms are built round 
a court, or sometimes two, according to the ex- 
tent of the house. In the midst is a fountain, 
sometimes surrounded with a portico, supported 
on fluted columns of white stucco ; the floor is 
paved with mosaic, sometimes wrought in imitation 
of vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and 
more or less beautiful, according to the rank of 
the inhabitant. There were paintings on all, but 
most of them have been removed to decorate the 
royal museums. Little winged figures, and small 
ornaments of exquisite elegance, yet remain. There 
is an ideal life in the forms of these paintings of 
an incomparable loveliness, though most are 
evidently the work of very inferior artists. It 
seems as if, from the atmosphere of mental beauty 
which surrounded them, every human being caught 
a splendour not his own. In one house you see 
how the bed-rooms were managed : — a small sofa 
was built up, where the cushions were placed ; two 
pictures, one representing Diana and Endymion, 
the other Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber ; 
and a little niche, which contains the statue of a 
domestic god. The floor is composed of a rich 
mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and 
porphyry ; it looks to the marble fountain and the 
snow-white columns, whose entablatures strew the 
floor of the portico they supported. The houses 
have only one story, and the apartments, though 
not large, are very lofty. A great advantage 
results from this, wholly unknown in our cities. 
The public buildings, whose ruins are now forests 
as it were of white fluted columns, and which then 
supported entablatures, loaded with sculptures, 
were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. 
This was the excellence of the ancients. Their 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



23 



private expenses were comparatively moderate ; 
the dwelling of one of the chief senators of Pompeii 
is elegant indeed, and adorned with most beautiful 
specimens of art, but small. But their public 
buddings are everywhere marked by the bold and 
grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In 
the little town of Pompeii, (it contained about 
twenty thousand inhabitants,) it is wonderful to 
see the number and the grandeur of their public 
buddings. Another advantage, too, is that, in the 
present case, the glorious scenery around is not 
shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of the 
Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient 
Pompeians could contemplate the clouds and the 
lamps of heaven ; could see the moon rise high 
behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, 
tremulous with an atmosphere of golden vapour, 
between Inarime and Misenum. 

We next saw the temples. Of the temple of 
.ZEsculapius little remains but an altar of black 
stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales 
of a serpent. His statue, in terra-cotta, was 
found in the cell. The temple of Isis is more 
perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted 
columns, and in the area around it are two 
altars, and many ceppi for statues ; and a little 
chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the 
most exquisite proportion ; its panels are adorned 
with figures in bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of 
a workmanship the most delicate and perfect that 
can be conceived. They are Egyptian subjects, 
executed by a Greek artist, who has harmonised 
all the unnatural extravagances of the original 
conception into the supernatural loveliness of his 
country's genius. They scarcely touch the ground 
with their feet, and their wind-uplifted robes seem 
in the place of wings. The temple in the midst 
raised on a high platform, and approached by 
steps, was decorated with exquisite paintings, some 
of which we saw in the museum at Portici. It is 
small, of the same materials as the chapel, with 
a pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic columns of 
white stucco, so white that it dazzles you to look 
at it. 

Thence through other porticos and labyrinths of 
walls and columns, (for I cannot hope to detafl 
everything to you,) we came to the Forum. This 
is a large square, surrounded by lofty porticos of 
fluted columns, some broken, some entire, their 
entablatures strewed under them. The temple of 
Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the 
Tribunal, and the Hall of Public Justice, with their 
forests of lofty columns, surround the Forum. Two 
pedestals or altars of an enormous size, (for, 
whether they supported equestrian statues, or 
were the altars of the temple of Venus, before 



which they stand, the guide could not tell,) occupy 
the lower end of the Forum. At the upper end, 
supported on an elevated platform, stands tin; 
temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its 
portico we sate, and pulled out our oranges, and 
figs, and bread, and medlars, (sorry fare, you will 
say,) and rested to eat. Here was a magnificent 
spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous 
shafts of the sun-shining columns was seen the 
sea, reflecting the purple heaven of noon above it, 
and supporting, as it were, on its line the dark 
lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly 
deep, and tinged towards their summits with 
streaks of new-fallen snow. Between was one 
small green island. To the right was Capreae, 
Inarime, Prochyta, and Misenum. Behind was 
the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth 
volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like 
column was sometimes darted into the clear dark 
sky, and fell in little streaks along the wind. 
Between Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as 
tlirough a chasm, was seen the main line of the 
loftiest Apennines, to the east. The day was 
radiant and warm. Every now and then we heard 
the subterranean thunder of Vesuvius ; its distant 
deep peals seemed to shake the very air and 
light of day, which interpenetrated our frames, 
with the sullen and tremendous sound. This 
scene was what the Greeks beheld (Pompeii, you 
know, was a Greek city). They lived in harmony 
with nature ; and the interstices of their in- 
comparable columns were portals, as it were, to 
admit the spirit of beauty which animates this 
glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. 
If such is Pompeii, what was Athens ? What 
scene was exhibited from the Acropolis, the 
Parthenon, and the temples of Hercules, and 
Theseus, and the Winds ? The islands and the 
iEgean sea, the mountains of Argolis, and the 
peaks of Pindus and Olympus, and the darkness of 
the Boeotian forests interspersed ] 

From the Forum we went to another public 
place ; a triangular portico, half enclosing the 
ruins of an enormous temple. It is bmlt on the 
edge of the hill overlooking the sea. That black 

point is the temple. In the apex of the triangle 
stands an altar and a fountain, and before the 
altar once stood the statue of the builder of the 
portico. Returning hence, and following the 
consular road, we came to the eastern gate of the 
city. The walls are of enormous strength, and 
inclose a space of three miles. On each side of 
the road beyond the gate are buflt the tombs. 
How unlike ours ! They seem not so much 
hiding-places for that which must decay, as 
voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits. They 



1J4 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



are of marble, radiantly white ; ami two, especially 

beautiful, are loaded with exquisite bas-reliefs. On 
the stucco-wall that incloses them are little em- 
blematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of 
dead and dying animals, and little winged genii, 
and female forms bending in groups in some 
funereal office. The higher reliefs represent, one a 
nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one. 
Within the cell stand the cinerary urns, sometimes 
one, sometimes more. It is said that paintings 
were found within ; which are now, as has been 
everything moveable in Pompeii, removed, and 
scattered about in royal museums. These tombs 
were the most impressive things of all. The wild 
woods surround them on either side ; and along 
the broad stones of the paved road which divides 
them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver 
and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as 
it were, like the step of ghosts. The radiance and 
magnificence of these dwellings of the dead, the 
white freshness of the scarcely finished marble, 
the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures 
which adorn them, contrast strangely with the 
simplicity of the houses of those who were living 
when Vesuvius overwhelmed them. 

I have forgotten the amphitheatre, which is of 
great magnitude, though much inferior to the 
Coliseum. I now understand why the Greeks 
were such great poets ; and, above all, I can 
account, it seems to me, for the harmony, the 
unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence, of all 
their works of art. They lived in a perpetual 
commerce with external nature, and nourished 
themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their 
theatres were all open to the mountains and the 
sky. Their cohmms, the ideal types of a sacred 
forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery, 
admitted the light and wind ; the odour and the 
freshness of the country penetrated the cities. 
Their temples were mostly upaithric ; and the 
flying clouds, the stars, or the deep sky, were seen 
above. 0, but for that series of wretched wars 
which terminated in the Roman conquest of the 
world ; but for the Christian religion, which put 
the finishing stroke on the ancient system ; but for 
those changes that conducted Athens to its ruin, — 
to what an eminence might not humanity have 
arrived ! 

In a short time I hope to tell you something of 
the museum of this city. 

You see how ill I follow the maxim of Horace, 
at least in its literal sense : " nil admirari " — 
which I should say, " properes est una " — to pre- 
vent there ever being anything admirable in the 
world. Fortunately Plato is of my opinion; and I 
had rather err with Plato than be right with Horace. 



At this moment I received your letter, indicating 
that you are removing to London. I am very 
much interested in the subject of this change, and 
beg you would write me all" the particulars of it. 
You will be able now to give me perhaps a closer 
insight into the politics of the times than was 

permitted you at Marlow. Of H I have a 

very slight opinion. There are rumours here of a 
revolution in Spain. A ship came in twelve days 
from Catalonia, and brought a report that the king 
was massacred ; that eighteen thousand insurgents 
surrounded Madrid ; but that before the popular 
party gained head enough, seven thousand were 
murdered by the Inquisition. Perhaps you know 
all by this time. The old king of Spain is dead 
here. Cobbett is a fine v^svoiroios — does his 
influence increase or diminish ? What a pity that 
so powerful a genius should be combined with the 
most odious moral qualities. 

We have reports here of a change in the English 
ministry — to what does it amount ? for, besides 
my national interest in it, I am on the watch to 
vindicate my most sacred rights, invaded by the 
chancery court. 

I suppose now we shall not see you in Italy this 
spring, whether Hunt comes or not. It's probable 
I shall hear nothing from him for some months, 
particularly if he does not come. Give me ses 
nouvelles. 

I am under an English surgeon here, who says I 
have a disease of the liver, which he will cure. 
We keep horses, as this kind of exercise is 
absolutely essential to my health. Elise* has just 
married our Italian servant, and has quitted us ; 
the man was a great rascal, and cheated enor- 
mously : this event was very much against our 
advice. 

I have scarcely been out since I Wrote last. 
Adieu ! — Yours most faithfully, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XVII. 
To T. L. P. Esq. 

Rome, March 23c?, 1819. 
My dear P., — I wrote to you the day before 
our departure from Naples. We came by slow 
journeys, with our own horses, to Rome, resting 
one day at Mola di Gaeta, at the inn called Villa 
di Cicerone, from being built on the ruins of his 
Villa, whose immense substructions overhang the 
sea, and are scattered among the orange -groves. 
Nothing can be lovelier than the scene from the 
terraces of the inn. On one side precipitous 

* A Swiss girl whom we had engaged as nursery-maid 
two years before, at Geneva. 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



125 



mountains, whose bases slope into an inclined plane 
of olive and orange copses — the latter forming, as 
it were, an emerald sky of leaves, starred with 
innumerable globes of their ripening fruit, whose 
rich splendour contrasted with the deep green 
foliage ; on the other the sea — bounded on one 
side by the antique town of Gaeta, and the other 
by what appears to be an island, the promontory 
of Circe. From Gaeta to Terracina the whole 
scenery is of the most sublime character. At 
Terracina, precipitous conical crags of immense 
height shoot into the sky and overhang the sea. 
At Albano, we arrived again in sight of Rome. 
Arches after arches in unending lines stretching 
across the uninhabited wilderness, the blue defined 
line of the mountains seen between them ; masses 
of nameless ruin standing like rocks out of the 
plain ; and the plain itself, with its billowy and 
unequal surface, announced the neighbourhood of 
Rome. And what shall I say to you of Rome ? 
If I speak of the inanimate ruins, the rude stones 
piled upon stones, which are the sepulchres of the 
fame of those who once arrayed them with the 
beauty which has faded, will you believe me 
insensible to the vital, the almost breathing 
creations of genius yet subsisting in their per- 
fection ? What has become, you will ask, of the 
Apollo, the Gladiator, the Venus of the Capitol ? 
What of the Apollo di Belvedere, the Laocoon ? 
What of Raffael and Guido 1 These things are 
best spoken of when the mind has drunk in the 
spirit of their forms ; and little indeed can I, who 
must devote no more than a few months to the 
contemplation of them, hope to know or feel of 
their profound beauty. 

I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its 
impressions on me on my first visit to this city. 
The next most considerable relic of antiquity, 
considered as a ruin, is the Thermse of Caracalla. 
These consist of six enormous chambers, above 
200 feet in height, and each enclosing a vast space 
like that of a field. There are, in addition, a num- 
ber of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden 
and woven over by the wild growth of weeds and 
ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime and 
lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven 
into steep ravines filled up with flowering shrubs, 
whose thick twisted roots are knotted in the rifts 
of the stones. At every step the aerial pinnacles 
of shattered stone group into new combinations of 
effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as 
the distant mountains change their aspect to one 
travelling rapidly along the plain. The perpendi- 
cular walls resemble nothing more than that cliff 
of Bisham wood, that is overgrown with wood, and 
yet is stony and precipitous — you know the one I 



mean ; not the chalk-pit, but the spot that has the 
pretty copse of fir-trees and privet-bushes at its 

base, and where II and I scrambled up, and 

you, to my infinite discontent, would go home. 
These walls surround green and level spaces of 
lawn, on which some elms have grown, and which 
are interspersed towards their skirts by masses of 
the fallen rum, overtwined with the broad leaves 
of the creeping weeds. The blue sky canopies it, ; 
and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous 
halls. 

But the most interesting effect remains. In one 
of the buttresses, that supports an immense and 
lofty arch, "which bridges the very winds of 
heaven," are the crumbling remains of an antique 
winding staircase, whose sides are open hi many 
places to the precipice. This you ascend, and 
arrive on the summit of these piles. There grow 
on every side thick entangled wildernesses of 
myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, and the flower- 
ing laurestinus, whose white blossoms are just 
developed, the white fig, and a thousand nameless 
plants sown by the wandering winds. These woods 
are intersected on every side by paths, like sheep- 
tracks through the copse-wood of steep mountains, 
which wind to every part of the immense labyrinth. 
From the midst rise those pinnacles and masses, 
themselves like mountains, which have been seen 
from below. In one place you wind along a nar- 
row strip of weed-grown ruin : on one side is the 
immensity of earth and sky, on the other a narrow 
chasm, which is bounded by an arch of enormous 
size, fringed by the many-coloured foliage and blos- 
soms, and supporting a lofty and irregular pyramid, 
overgrown like itself with the all-prevailing vege- 
tation. Around rise other crags and other peaks, 
all arrayed, and the deformity of their vast desola- 
tion softened down, by the undecaying investiture 
of nature. Come to Rome. It is a scene by which 
expression is overpowered ; which words cannot 
convey. Still further, winding up one half of the 
shattered pyramids, by the path through the 
blooming copsewood, you come to a little mossy 
lawn, surrounded by the wild shrubs ; it is over- 
grown with anemonies, wall-flowers, and violets, 
whose stalks pierce the starry moss, and with 
radiant blue flowers, whose names I know not, and 
which scatter through the air the divinest odour, 
which, as you recline under the shade of the ruin, 
produces sensations of voluptuous faintness, like 
the combinations of sweet music. The paths 
still wind on, threading the perplexed windings, 
other labyrinths, other lawns, and deep dells of 
wood, and lofty rocks, and terrific chasms. When 
I tell you that these ruins cover several acres, and 
that the paths above penetrate at least half their 



126 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



extant, your imagination will till op all that I am 
unable to express of this astonishing seene. 

I speak of these things not in the order in which 
I visited tin in, but in that of the impression which 
Dmj made on me, or perhaps chance directs. The 
ruins of the ancient Forum are so far fortunate 
that they have not been walled up in the modern 
city. They stand in an open, lonesome place, 
bounded on one side by the modern city, and the 
other by the Palatine Mount, covered with shape- 
less masses of ruin. The tourists tell you all about 
these things, and I am afraid of stumbling on their 
language when I enumerate what is so well known. 
There remain eight granite columns of the Ionic 
order, with their entablature, of the temple of 
Concord, founded by Camillus. I fear that the 
immense expense demanded by these columns for- 
bids us to hope that they are the remains of any 
edifice dedicated by that most perfect and virtuous 
of men. It is supposed to have been repaired 
under the Eastern Emperors ; alas, what a contrast 
of recollections ! Near them stand those Corinthian 
fluted columns, which supported the angle of a 
temple ; the architrave and entablature are worked 
with delicate sculpture. Beyond, to the south, is 
another solitary column ; and still more distant, 
three more, supporting the wreck of an entablature. 
Descending from the Capitol to the Forum, is the 
triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, less perfect 
than that of Constantine, though from its propor- 
tions and magnitude a most impressive monument. 
That of Constantine, or rather of Titus, (for the 
relief and sculpture, and even the colossal images 
of Dacian captives, were torn by a decree of the 
senate from an arch dedicated to the latter, to 
adorn that of this stupid and wicked monster, 
Constantine, one of whose chief merits consists in 
establishing a religion, the destroyer of those arts 
which would have rendered so base a spoliation 
unnecessary) is the most perfect. It is an 
admirable work of art. It is built of the finest 
marble, and the outline of the reliefs is in manv 
parts as perfect as if just finished. Four Corin- 
thian fluted columns support, on each side, a bold 
entablature, whose bases are loaded with reliefs 
of captives in every attitude of humiliation and 
slavery. The compartments above express, in 
bolder relief, the enjoyment of success ; the con- 
queror on his throne, or in his chariot, or nodding 
over the crushed multitudes, who writhe under his 
horses' hoofs, as those below express the torture 
and abjectness of defeat. There are three arches, 
whose roofs are panneled with fretwork, and their 
sides adorned with similar reliefs. The keystone 
of these arches is supported each by two winged 
figures of Victory, whose hair floats on the wind 



of their own speed, and whose arms are out- 
stretched, bearing trophies, as if impatient to 
meet. They look, as it were, borne from the 
subject extremities of the earth, on the breath 
which is the exhalation of that battle and deso- 
lation, wliich it is their mission to commemorate. 
Never were monuments so completely fitted to 
the purpose for which they were designed, of 
expressing that mixture of energy and error 
which is called a triumph. 

I walk forth in the purple and golden fight of an 
Italian evening, and return by star or moon light, 
through this scene. The elms are just budding, 
and the warm spring winds bring unknown odours, 
all sweet, from the country. I see the radiant 
Orion through the mighty columns of the temple 
of Concord, and the mellow fading fight softens 
down the modern buildings of the Capitol, the only 
ones that interfere with the sublime desolation of 
the scene. On the steps of the Capitol itself, stand 
two colossal statues of Castor and Pollux, each 
with his horse, finely executed, though far inferior 
to those of Monte Cavallo, the cast of one of which 
you know we saw together in London. This walk 
is close to our lodging, and this is my evening 
walk. 

What shall I say of the modern city ? Rome 
is yet the capital of the world. It is a city of 
palaces and temples, more glorious than those 
which any other city contains, and of ruins more 
glorious than they. Seen from any of the emi- 
nences that surround it, it exhibits domes beyond 
domes, and palaces, and colonnades interminably, 
even to the horizon ; interspersed with patches of 
desert, and mighty ruins which stand girt by their 
own desolation, in the midst of the fanes of living 
religions and the habitations of living men, in 
sublime loneliness. St Peter's is, as you have 
heard, the loftiest building in Europe. Externally 
it is inferior in architectural beauty to St. Paul's, 
though not wholly devoid of it ; internally it 
exhibits littleness on a large scale, and is in every 
respect opposed to antique taste. You know my 
propensity to admire ; and I tried to persuade 
myself out of this opinion — in vain ; the more I 
see of the interior of St. Peter's, the less 
impression as a whole does it produce on me. 
I cannot even think it lofty, though its dome 
is considerably higher than any hill within fifty 
miles of London ; and when one reflects, it is 
an astonishing monument of the daring energy 
of man. Its colonnade is wonderfully fine, and 
there are two fountains, wliich rise in spire-like 
columns of water to an immense height in the 
sky, and falling on the porphyry vases from which 
they spring, fill the whole air with a radiant mist, 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



127 



which at noon is thronged with innumerable rain- 
bows. Li the midst stands an obelisk. In front 
is the palace-like facade of St. Peter's, certainly 
magnificent ; and there is produced, on the whole, 
an architectural combination unequalled in the 
world. But the dome of the temple is concealed, 
except at a very great distance, by the facade and 
the inferior part of the building, and that diabolical 
contrivance they call an attic. 

The effect of the Pantheon is totally the reverse 
of that of St. Peter's. Though not a fourth part 
of the size, it is, as it were, the visible image of the 
universe ; in the perfection of its proportions, as 
when you regard the unmeasured dome of heaven, 
the idea of magnitude is swallowed up and lost. 
It is open to the sky, and its wide dome is lighted 
by the ever-changing illumination of the air. The 
clouds of noon fly over it, and at night the keen 
stars are seen through the azure darkness, hanging 
immoveably. or driving after the driving moon 
among the clouds. We visited it by moonlight ; 
it is supported by sixteen columns, fluted and 
Corinthian, of a certain rare and beautiful yellow 
marble, exquisitely polished, called here giallo 
antico. Above these are the niches for the statues 
of the twelve gods. This is the only defect of this 
sublime temple ; there ought to have been no 
interval between the commencement of the dome 
and the cornice, supported by the columns. Thus 
there would have been no diversion from the 
magnificent simplicity of its form. This im- 
provement is alone wanting to have completed 
the unity of the idea. 

The fountains of Rome are, in themselves, mag- 
nificent combinations of art, such as alone it were 
worth coming to see. That in the Piazza Navona, 
a large square, is composed of enormous fragments 
of rock, piled on each other, and penetrated as by 
caverns. This mass supports an Egyptian obelisk 
of immense height. On the four corners of the 
rock recline, in different attitudes, colossal figures 
representing the four divisions of the globe. The 
water bursts from the crevices beneath them. 
They are sculptured with great spirit ; one 
impatiently tearing a veil from his eyes ; another 
with his hands stretched upwards. The Fontana 
di Trevi is the most celebrated, and is rather a 
waterfall than a fountain ; gushing out from masses 
of rock, with a gigantic figure of Neptune ; and 
below are two river gods, checking two winged 
horses, struggling up from among the rocks and 
waters. The whole is not ill conceived nor executed ; 
but you know not how delicate the imagination 
becomes by dieting with antiquity day after day ! 
The only things that sustain the comparison are 
Raffael, Guido, and Salvator Rosa. 



The fountain on the Quirinal, or rather the group 
formed by the statues, obelisk and the fountain, 
i-, however, the most admirable of all. From the 
Piazza Quirinale, or rather Monte Cavallo, you 
see the boundless ocean of domes, spires, and 
columns, which is the City, Rome. On a pedestal 
of white marble rises an obelisk of red granite, 
piercing the blue sky. Before it is a vast basin of 
porphyry, in the midst of which rises a column 
of the purest water, which collects into itself all 
the overhanging colours of the sky, and breaks 
them into a thousand prismatic hues and graduated 
shadows — they fall together with its dashing water- 
drops into the outer basin. The elevated situ- 
ation of this fountain produces, I imagine, this 
effect of colour. On each side, on an elevated 
pedestal, stand the statues of Castor and Pollux, 
each in the act of taming his horse ; which are said, 
but I believe wholly without authority, to be the 
work of Phidias and Praxiteles. These figures 
combine the irresistible energy with the sublime 
and perfect loveliness supposed to have belonged 
to their divine nature. The reins no longer exist, 
but the position of their hands and the sustained 
and calm command of their regard, seem to re- 
quire no mechanical aid to enforce obedience. The 
countenances at so great a height are scarcely 
visible, and I have a better idea of that of which 
we saw a cast together in London, than of the 
other. But the sublime and living majesty of 
their limbs and mien, the nervous and fiery anima- 
tion of the horses they restrain, seen in the blue 
sky of Italy, and overlooking the city of Rome, 
surrounded by the fight and the music of that 
crystalline fountain, no cast can communicate. 

These figures were found at the Baths of Con- 
stantine ; but, of course, are of remote antiquity. 
I do not acquiesce however in the practice of attri- 
buting to Phidias, or Praxiteles, or Scopas, or some 
great master, any aolmirable work that may be 
found. We find little of what remained, and per- 
haps the works of these were such as greatly 
surpassed all that we conceive of most perfect and 
admirable in what little has escaped the dehige. 
If I am too jealous of the honour of the Greeks, 
our masters and creators, the gods whom we 
should worship, — pardon me. 

I have said what I feel without entering into any 
critical discussions of the rtiins of Rome, and the 
mere outside of this inexhaustible mine of thought 
and feeling. Hobhouse, Eustace, and Forsyth, will 
tell all the shew-knowledge about it, — " the com- 
mon stuff of the earth." By-the-bye, Forsyth is 
worth reading, as I judge from a chapter or two I 
have seen. I cannot get the book here. 

I ought to have observed that the central arch 



128 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



of (he triumphal Arch of Titus yet subsists, more 
perfect in its proportions! they say, than any of a 
Inter date. This I did not remark. The figures 
of Victory, with unfolded wings, and each Bpurning 
bank ■ globe with outstretched feet, arc, perhaps, 
more beautiful than these on either of the others. 
Their lips are parted : a delieate mode of indicating 
the fervour of their desire to arrive at the des- 
tined resting-place, and to express the eager respi- 
ration of their speed. Indeed, so essential to heauty 
were the forms expressive of the exercise of the 
imagination and the affections considered by Greek 
artists, that no ideal figiu-e of antiquity, not des- 
tined to some representation directly exclusive of 
such a character, is to be found with closed lips. 
Within this arch are two panneled alto relievos, 
one representing a train of people bearing in pro- 
cession the instruments of Jewish worship, among 
which is the holy candlestick wdth seven branches ; 
on the other, Titus standing on a quadriga, with a 
winged Victory. The grouping of the horses, and 
the beauty, correctness, and energy of their de- 
lineation, is remarkable, though they are much 
destroyed.* 

— • — 

LETTER XVIII. 
To T. L. P. Esq. 

Rome, April 6th, 1819. 

My dear P., — I sent you yesterday a long 

letter, all about antique Rome, which you had 

better keep for some leisure day. I received 

yours, and one of Hunt's, yesterday. — So, you 

know the B s ? I could not help considering 

Mrs. B., when I knew her, as the most admirable 

* Shelley left another description of this ruin: — "On 
the inner compartment of the Arch of Titus, is sculp- 
tured, in deep relief, the desolation of a city. On one side, 
the walls of the Temple, split hy the fury of conflagra- 
tions, hang tottering in the act of ruin. The accompani- 
ments of a town taken hy assault, — matrons and virgins, 
and children and old men, gathered into groups, and the 
rapine and license of a barbarous and enraged soldiery — 
are imaged in the distance. The foreground is occupied 
by a procession of the victors, bearing in their profane 
hands the holy candlesticks and the tables of shewbread, 
and the sacred instruments of the eternal worship of the 
Jews. On the opposite side, the reverse of this sad picture, 
Titus is represented standing in a chariot drawn by four 
horses, crowned with laurel, and surrounded by the 
tumultuous numbers of his triumphant army, and the 
magistrates, and priests, and generals, and philosophers, 
draeged in chains beside his wheels. Behind him stands 
a Victory eagle-winged. 

" The arch is now mouldering into ruins, and the ima- 
gery almost erased by the lapse of fifty generations. Be- 
yond this obscure monument of Hebrew desolation, is 
seen the tomb of the Destroyer's family, now a mountain 
of ruin 8. 

" The Flavian Amphitheatre has become a habitation 
for owls and bats. The power, of whose possession it was 
once the type, and of whose departure it is now the 
emblem, is become a dream and a memory. Rome is no 
more than Jerusalem." 



specimen of a human being 1 had ever seen. 
Nothing earthly ever appeared to me more perfect 
than her character and manners. It is improbable 
that I shall ever meet again the person whom I 
si) much esteemed, and still admire. I wish, 
however, that when you see her, you would tell 
her that I have not forgotten her, nor any of the 
amiable circle once assembled round her ; and 
that I desire such remembrances to her as an exile 
and a Pariah may be permitted to address to an 
acknowledged member of the community of 
mankind. I hear they dined at your lodgings. 

But no mention of A and his wife — where 

were they ? C , though so young when I saw 

her, gave indications of her mother's excellences ; 
and, certainly less fascinating, is, I doubt not, 
equally amiable, and more sincere. It was hardly 
possible for a person of the extreme subtlety and 

delicacy of Mrs. B 's understanding and 

affections, to be quite sincere and constant. 

I am all anxiety about your I. H. affair. There 
are few who will feel more hearty satisfaction at 
your success, in this or any other enterprise, than 
I shall. Pray let me have the earliest intelligence. 

When shall I return to England ? The Pythia 
has ascended the tripod, but she replies not. Our 
present plans — and I know not what can induce 
us to alter them — lead us back to Naples in a 
month or six weeks, where it is almost decided 
that we should remain until the commencement of 
1820. You may imagine, when we receive such 
letters as yours and Hunt's, what this resolution 
costs us — but these are not our only com- 
munications from England. My health is ma- 
terially better. My spirits, not the most brilliant 
in the world ; but that we attribute to our 
solitary situation, and, though happy, how should 
I be lively ? We see something of Italian society 
indeed. The Romans please me much, especially 
the women, w T ho, though totally devoid of every 
kind of information, or culture of the imagination, 
or affections, or understanding — and, in this 
respect, a kind of gentle savages — yet contrive to 
be interesting. Their extreme innocence and 
naivete, the freedom and gentleness of their 
manners ; the total absence of affectation, makes 
an intercourse with them very like an intercourse 
with uncorrupted children, whom they resemble in 
loveliness as well as simplicity. I have seen two 
women in society here of the highest beauty ; their 
brows and lips, and the moulding of the face 
modelled with sculptural exactness, and the dark 
luxuriance of their hair floating over their fine 
complexions ; and the lips — you must hear the 
common-places which escape from them, before 
they cease to be dangerous. The only inferior 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



12P 



part are the eyes, which, though good and gentle, 

want the mazy depth of colour behind colour, with 
which the intellectual women of England and 
Germany entangle the heart in soul-inwoven 
labyrinths. 

This is holy-week, and Rome is quite full. The 
Emperor of Austria is here, and Maria Louisa is 
coming. On their journey through the other 
cities of Italy, she was greeted with loud accla- 
mations, and riras of Napoleon. Idiots and 
slaves ! Like the frogs m the fable, because they 
are discontented with the log, they call upon the 
stork, who devours them. Great festas, and 
magnificent funzioni here — we cannot get tickets 
to all. There are five thousand strangers in 
Rome, and only room for five hundred, at the 
celebration of the famous Miserere, in the Sixtine 
chapel, the only thing I regret we shall not be 
present at. After all, Rome is eternal ; and were 
all that is extinguished, that which has been, the 
ruins and the sculptures, would remain, and 
Raffaele and Guido be alone regretted. 

In the Square of St. Peter's there are about 
three hundred fettered criminals at work, hoeing 
out the weeds that grow between the stones of the 
pavement. Their legs are heavily ironed, and 
some are chained two by two. They sit in long 
rows, hoeing out the weeds, dressed in parti- I 
coloured clothes. Near them sit or saunter, groups 
of soldiers, armed with loaded muskets. The 
iron discord of those innumerable chains clanks 
up into the sonorous air, and produces, contrasted 
with the musical dashing of the fountains, and the 
deep azure beauty of the sky, and the magnificence ; 
of the architecture around, a conflict of sensations i 
allied to madness. It is the emblem of Italy — 
moral degradation contrasted with the glory of 
nature and the arts. 

We see no English society here ; it is not 
probable that we could if we desired it, and I am 
certain that we should find it insupportable. The 
manners of the rich English are wholly insupport- 
able, and they assume pretensions which they would 
not venture upon in their own country. I am yet 
ignorant of the event of Hobhouse's election. I 
saw the last numbers were — Lamb, 4200 ; and 
Hobhouse, 3900— 14th day. There is little hope. 
That mischievous Cobbett has divided and weak- 
ened the interest of the popular party, so that the 
factions that prey upon our country have been able 

to coalesce to its exclusion. The N s you have 

not seen. I am curious to know what kind of a 
girl Octavia becomes ; she promised well. Tell 

ri his Melpomene is in the Vatican, and that 

her attitude and drapery surpass, if possible, the 
graces of her countenance. 



My " Prometheus Unbound" is just finished, 
and in a month or two I shall send it. It is a 
drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind 
yet unattempted ; and I think the execution is 
better than any of my former attempts. By-the- 
bye, have you seen Oilier I I never hear from 
him, and am ignorant whether some vorBOB I sent 
him from Naples, entitled, I think, " Lines on the 
Euganean hills," have reached him in safety or not. 
As to the Reviews, I suppose there is nothing but 
abuse ; and this is no't hearty or sincere enough to 
amuse me. As to the poem now printing,* I lay 
no stress on it one way or the other. The con- 
eluding lines are natural. 

I believe, my dear P., that you wish us to come 
back to England. How is it possible ? Health, 
competence, tranquillity — all these Italy permits, 
and England takes away. I am regarded by all 
who know or hear of me, except, I think, on the 
whole, five individuals, as a rare prodigy of crime 
and pollution, whose look even might infect. This 
is a large computation, and I don't think I could 
mention more than three. Such is the spirit of 
the English abroad as well as at home.f 

Few compensate, indeed, for all the rest, and if 
I were cd&ne I should laugh ; or if I were rich 
enough to do all things, which I shall never be. 
Pity me for my absence from those social enjoy- 
ments which England might afford me, and which 
I know so well how to appreciate. Still, I shall 
return some fine morning, out of pure weakness of 
heart. 

My dear P., most faithfully yours, 

P. B. Shelley. 



LETTER XIX. 
To Mn. and Mrs. GISBORNE. 

(LEGHORN.) 

Rome, April 6th, 1819. 
My dear Friends, — A combination of circum- 
stances, which Mary will explain to you, leads us 

* Rosalind and Helen. 

t These expressions show how keenly Shelley felt the 
calumnies heaped on him during his life. The very ex- 
aggeration of which he is guilty, is a clue to mxich of hi3 
despondency. His seclusion from society resulted greatly 
from his extreme ill health, and his dislike of strangers 
and numbers, as well as the system of domestic economy 
which his lavish benevolence forced us to restrict within 
narrow bounds. In justice to our countrymen, I must 
mention that several distinguished for intellectual emi- 
nence, among them, Frederic Earl of Guilford, and Sir 
William Drummond, called on him at Rome. Accident 
at the time prevented him from cultivating their ac- 
quaintance — the death of our son, and our subsequent 
retirement at Pisa, shut us out still more from the world. 
I confess that the insolence of some of the more vulgar 
among the travelling English, rendered me anxious that 
Shelley should be more willing to extend his acquaintance 
among the better sort, but his health was an insuperable 
bar. 



130 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



back to Naples in June, or rather the end of May, 
where we shall remain until the ensuing winter. 
We shall take a house at Tovtiei or Gsstel a Mare, 
until late in the autumn. 

The object of this letter is to ask you to spend 
this period with us. There is no society which 
we have regret te d or desired so much as yours, 
ami in onr solitude the benefit of your con- 
eession would be greater than I can express. 
What is a sail to Naples ? It is the season of 
tranquil weather and prosperous winds. If I knew 
the magic that lay in any given form of words, I 
would employ them to persuade ; but I fear that 
all I can say is, as you know with truth, we desire 
that you would come — we wish to see you. You 
came to see Mary at Lucca, directly I had de- 
parted to Venice. It is not our custom, when we 
can help it, any more than it is yours, to divide 
our pleasures. 

What shall I say to entice you ? We shall have 
a piano, and some books, and — little else, beside 
ourselves. But what will be most inviting to you, 
you will give much, though you may receive but 
little, pleasure. 

But whilst I write this with more desire than 
hope, yet some of that, perhaps the project may 
fall into your designs. It is intolerable to think of 
your being buried at Livorno. The success assured 
by Mr. Reveley's talents requires another scene. 
You may have decided to take this summer to 
consider — and why not with us at Naples, rather 
than at Livorno ? 

I could address, with respect to Naples, the 
words of Polypheme in Theocritus, to all the 
friends I wish to see, and you especially : 

'E^evOois, TaXdreia, ical ££ep6o?cra Xadoio, 
"Clcnrep iyw vvv <&8e KaOrifiwos, o'lKaS' aTrevdeiv*. 
Most sincerely yours, 

P. B. Shelley. 



LETTER XX. 
To T. L. P., Esq. 

Livorno, July, 1819. 
My dear P. — We still remain, and shall remain 
nearly two months longer, at Livorno. Our house 
is a melancholy one,+ and only cheered by letters 
from England. I got your note, in which you 
speak of three letters having been sent to Naples, 
which I have written for. I have heard also from 

H , who confirms the news of your success, an 

intelligence most grateful to me. 

* Come, O Galatea ; and having come, forget, as do I, 
now sitting here, to return home. 

t We had l06t our eldest, and, at that time, only child, 
the preceding month at Rome. 



The object of the present letter is to ask a 
favour of you. I have written a tragedy, on the 
subject of a story well known in Italy, and, in my 
conception, eminently dramatic. I have taken 
some pains to make my play fit for representation, 
and those who have already seen it judge favour- 
ably. It is written without any of the peculiar 
feelings and opinions which characterise my other 
compositions ; I having attended simply to the 
impartial development of such characters, as it is 
probable the persons represented really were, to- 
gether with the greatest degree of popular effect 
to be produced by such a development. I send 
you a translation of the Italian manuscript on 
which my play is founded, the chief subject of 
which I have touched very delicately ; for my 
principal doubt, as to whether it would succeed as 
an acting play, hangs entirely on the question, as 
to whether such a thing as incest in this shape, 
however treated, would be admitted on the stage. 
I think, however, it will form no objection : con- 
sidering, first, that the facts are matter of history ; 
and, secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which I 
have treated it. 

I am exceedingly interested in the question of 
whether this attempt of mine will succeed or no. 
I am strongly inclined to the affirmative at pre- 
sent, founding my hopes on this, that, as a com- 
position, it is certainly not inferior to any of the 
modern plays that have been acted, with the 
exception of " Remorse ;" that the interest of its 
plot is incredibly greater and more real ; and that 
there is nothing beyond what the multitude are 
contented to believe that they can understand, 
either in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish 
to preserve a complete incognito, and can trust to 
you, that whatever else you do, you will at least 
favour me on this point. Indeed this is essential, 
deeply essential to its success. After it had been 
acted, and successfully (could I hope such a thing), 
1 would own itjf I pleased, and use the celebrity 
it might acquire to my own purposes. 

What I want you to do is, to procure for me its 
presentation at Covent Garden. The principal 
character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for Miss 
O'Neil, and it might even seem written for her, 
(God forbid that I should ever see her play it — it 
would tear my nerves to pieces,) and, in all re- 
spects it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The 
chief male character, I confess, I should be very 
unwilling that any one but Kean should play — 
that is impossible, and I must be contented with 
an inferior actor. I think you know some of the 
people of that theatre, or at least, some one who 
knows them ; and when you have read the play, 
you may say enough, perhaps, to induce them not 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



131 



to reject it without consideration — but of this, per- 
haps, if I may judge from the tragedies which 
they have accepted, there is no danger at any 
rate. 

Write to me as soon as you can on this subject, 
because it is necessary that I should present it, or, 
if rejected by the theatre, print it this coming 
season ; lest somebody else should get hold of it, 
as the story, which now exists only in manuscript, 
begins to be generally known among the English. 
The translation which I send you is to be prefixed 
to the play, together with a print of Beatrice. I 
have a copy of her picture by Guido, now in the 
Colonna palace at Rome — the most beautiful crea- 
ture you can conceive. 

Of course, you will not show the manuscript to 
any one — and write to me by return of post, at 
which time the play will be ready to be sent. 

I expect soon to write again, and it shall be a 
less selfish letter. As to Oilier, I don't know what 
has been published, or what has arrived at his 
hands. — My " Prometheus," though ready, I do 
not send till I know more. 

Ever yours, moet faithfully, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XXI. 
To LEIGH HUNT, Esq. 

Livorno, August 15th, 1819. 

My dear Friend, — How good of you to write 
to us so often, and such kind letters ! But it is 
like lending a beggar. What can I offer in re- 
turn? 

Though surrounded by suffering and disquietude, 
and, latterly, almost overcome by our strange mis- 
fortune*, I have not been idle. My " Prometheus" 
is finished, and I am also on the eve of completing 
another work f, totally different from anything 
you might consider that I should write ; of a more 
popular kind ; and, if anything of mine could 
deserve attention, of higher claims. " Be innocent 
of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou approve 
the performance." 

I send you a little poem X to give to Oilier for 
publication, but without my name. P. will correct 
the proofs. I wrote it with the idea of offering it 
to the " Examiner," but I find it is too long. It 
was composed last year at Este ; two of the cha- 
racters you will recognise ; and the third is also 
in some degree a painting from nature, but, with 
respect to time and place, ideal. You will find 
the little piece, I think, in some degree consistent 
with your own ideas of the manner in which poetry 

* The sudden death of William Shelley, then our only 
child, which happened in Rome, 6th June, 1819. 
t The Cenci. % Julian and Maddalo. 



ought to be written. I have employed ;i certain 
familial' style of language to express the actual 
way in which people talk with each other, whom 
education and a certain refinement of sentiment 

have placed above the use of vulgar idioms. 1 use 
the word vulgar in its most extensive sense. The 
vulgarity of rank and fashion is as p,iosn in its way 
as that of poverty, and its cant terms equally ex- 
pressive of bare conceptions and therefore equally 
unfit for poetry. Not that the familiar style is to 
be admitted in the treatment of a subject wholly 
ideal, or in that part of any subject which relates 
to common life, where the passion, exceeding a 
certain limit, touches the boundaries of that which 
is ideal. Strong passion expresses itself in meta- 
phor, borrowed from objects alike remote or near, 
and casts over all the shadow of its own greatness. 
But what am I about ? If my grandmother suck3 
eggs, was it I who taught her ? 

If you would really correct the proof, I need 
not trouble P., who, I suppose, has enough. Can 
you take it as a compliment that I prefer to 
trouble you ? 

I do not particularly wish this poem to be known 
as mine ; but, at all events, I would not put my 
name to it. I leave you to judge whether it is 
best to throw it into the fire, or to publish it. So 
much for self— self, that burr that will stick to 
one. Your kind expressions about my Eclogue 
gave me great pleasure ; indeed, my great stimulus 
in writing, is to have the approbation of those who 
feel kindly towards me. The rest is mere duty. I 
am also delighted to hear that you think of us 
and form fancies about us. We cannot yet come 
home. Most affectionately yours, 

P. B. Shelley. 



LETTER XXII. 
To LEIGH HUNT, Esq. 

Livorno, Sept. 8, 1819. 

My dear Friend, — At length has arrived 
Ollier's parcel, and with it the portrait. What a 
delightful present ! It is almost yourself, and we 
sat talking with it, and of it, all the evening. It 
is a great pleasure to us to possess it, a pleasure 
in time of need, coming to us when there are few 
others. How we wish it were you, and not your 
picture ! How I wish we were with you ! 

This parcel, you know, and all its letters, are 

now a year old — some older. There are all kinds 

of dates, from March to August, and "your date," 

to use Shakspeare's expression, " is better in a pie 

or a pudding, than in your letter." — " Virginity," 

Parolles says, but letters are the same thing in 

another shape. 

s 2 



1 32 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



With it came, too, Lamb's works, l have looked 
at none of the other books yet. What a lovely thing 
is his H Rosamund Gray !" How much knowledge 
of the sweetest and deepest parts of our nature in it ! 

When I flunk of such a mind as Lamb's— when I 
Bee how unnoticed remain things of such exquisite 
and complete perfection, what, should I hope for 
inyself.if lhad not higher objects in view than fame? 
1 have seen tot) little of Italy, and of pictures. 
Perhaps 1\ has shown you some of my letters to 
him. But at Rome I was very ill, seldom able to 
go out without a carriage ; and though I kept 
horses for two months there, yet there is so much 
to see ! Perhaps I attended more to sculpture 
than painting, its forms being more easily intelli- 
gible than that of the latter. Yet, I saw the 
famous works of Raffaele, whom I agree with the 
whole world in thinking the finest painter. With 
respect to Michael Angelo I dissent, and think 
with astonishment and indignation of the common 
notion that he equals, and, in some respects, 
exceeds Raffaele. He seems to me to have no 
sense of moral dignity and loveliness ; and the 
energy for which he has been so much praised, 
appears to me to be a certain rude, external, 
mechanical quality, in comparison with anything 
possessed by Raffaele, or even much inferior artists. 
His famous painting in the Sixtine Chapel seems 
to me deficient in beauty and majesty, both in the 
conception and the execution. He has been called 
the Dante of painting ; but if we find some of the 
gross and strong outlines which are employed in 
the most distasteful passages of the "Inferno," 
where shall we find your Francesca — where the 
spirit coming over the sea in a boat, like Mars 
rising from the vapours of the horizon — where 
Matilda gathering flowers, and all the exquisite 
tenderness, and sensibility, and ideal beauty, in 
which Dante excelled all poets except Shakspeare ? 

As to Michael Angelo's Moses — but you have a 
cast of that in England. I write these things, 
heaven knows why ! 

I have written something and finished it, dif- 
ferent from anything else, and a new attempt for 
me ; and I mean to dedicate it to you. I should 
not have done so without your approbation, but I 
asked your picture last night, and it smiled assent. 
If I did not think it in some degree worthy of you, 
I would not make you a public offering of it. I 
expect to have to write to you soon about it. If 
Oilier is not turned Jew, Christian, or become 
infected with the Murrain, he will publish it. Don't 
let him be frightened, for it is nothing which, by 
any courtesy of language, can be termed either 
moral or immoral. 

Mary has written to Marianne for a parcel, in 



which I beg you will make Oilier enclose what you 
know would most interest me — your " Calendar," 
(a sweet extract, from which I saw in the Exami- 
ner,) and the other poems belonging to you ; and, 
for some friends of mine, my Eclogue. This par- 
cel, which must be sent instantly, will reach me by 
October, but don't trust letters to it, except just a 
line or so. When you write, write by the post. 
Ever your affectionate 

P. B. S. 
My love to Marianne and Bessy, and Thornton 
too, and Percy, &c, and if you could imagine any 
way in which I could be useful to them here, tell 
me. I will enquire about the Italian chalk. You 
have no idea of the pleasure this portrait gives us. 



LETTER XXIII. 
To LEIGH HUNT, Esq. 

Livorno, Sept. 27th, 1819. 
My dear Friend, — We are now on the point of 
leaving this place for Florence, where we have 
taken pleasant apartments for six months, which 
brings us to the 1 st of April, the season at which 
new flowers and new thoughts spring forth upon 
the earth and in the mind. What is then our des- 
tination is yet undecided. I have not yet seen 
Florence, except as one sees the outside of the 
streets ; but its physiognomy indicates it to be a 
city which, though the ghost of a republic, yet 
possesses most amiable qualities. I wish you could 
meet us there in the spring, and we would try to 
muster up a " lieta brigata," which, leaving behind 
them the pestilence of remembered misfortunes, 
might act over again the pleasures of the Interlo- 
cutors in Boccaccio. I have been lately reading 
this most divine writer. He is, in a high sense of 
the word, a poet, and his language has the rhythm 
and harmony of verse. I think him not equal 
certainly to Dante or Petrarch, but far superior 
to Tasso and Ariosto, the children of a later and 
of a colder day. I consider the three first as the 
productions of the vigour of the infancy of a new 
nation — as rivulets from the same spring as that 
which fed the greatness of the republics of Flo- 
rence and Pisa, and which checked the influence 
of the German emperors ; and from which, through 
obscurer channels, Raffaele and Michael Angelo 
drew the fight and the harmony of their inspira- 
tion. When the second-rate poets of Italy wrote,, 
the corrupting blight of tyranny was already hang- 
ing on every bud of genius. Energy, and simplicity, 
and unity of idea, were no more. In vain do we seek 
in the finest passages of Ariosto and Tasso, any 
expression which at all approaches in this respect 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



133 



to those of Dante and Petrarch. How much do I 
admire Boccaccio ! What descriptions of nature 
are those in his little introductions to every new 
day ! It is the morning of life stripped of that 
mist of familiarity which makes it obscure to us. 
Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep 
sense of the fair ideal of human life, considered in 
its social relations. His more serious theories of 
love agree especially with mine. He often expres- 
ses things lightly too, which have serious meanings 
of a very beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, 
the opposite of the Christian, stoical, ready-made, 
and worldly system of morals. Do you remember 
one little remark, or rather maxim of his, which 
might do some good to the common narrow-minded 
conceptions of love, — " Bocca bacciata non perde 
ventura ; anzi rinnuova, come fa la luna !" 

We expect Mary to be confined towards the 
end of October. The birth of a child will probably 
retrieve her from some part of her present melan- 
choly depression. 

It would give me much pleasure to know Mr. 
Lloyd. Do you know, when I was in Cumberland, 
I got Southey to borrow a copy of Berkeley from 
him, and I remember observing some pencil notes 
in it, probably written by Lloyd, which I thought 
particularly acute. One, especially, struck me as 
being the assertion of a doctrine, of which even 
then I had long been persuaded, and on which I 
had founded much of my persuasions, as regarded 
the imagined cause of the universe — " Mind cannot 
create, it can only perceive." Ask him if he 
remembers having written it. Of Lamb you know 
my opinion, and you can bear witness to the regret 
which I felt, when I learned that the calumny of an 
enemy had deprived me of his society whilst in 
England. — Oilier told me that the Quarterly are 
going to review me. I suppose it will be a pretty 
, and as I am acquiring a taste for humour 
and drollery, I confess I am curious to see it. I 
have sent my " Prometheus Unbound" to P. ; if 
you ask him for it he will show it you. I think it 
will, please you. 

Whilst I went to Florence, Mary wrote, but I 
did not see her letter. — Well, good b'ye. Next 
Monday I shall write to you from Florence. Love 
to all. Most affectionately your friend, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XXIV. 
To Mrs. GISBORNE. 

Florence, October 13th or lith, 1819. 
My dear Friend, — The regret wo feel at our 
absence from you persuades me that it is a state 
which cannot last, and which, so long as it must 



last, will be interrupted by sonic intervals, one of 
which is destined to be, your all coming to visit us 
here. Poor Oscar! I feel a kind of remorse to 
think of the unequal love with which two animated 
beings regard each other, when I experience no 
such sensations for him, as those which he mani- 
fested for us. His importunate regret is, however, 
a type of ours, as regards you. Our memory — if 
you will accept so humble a metaphor — is for ever 
scratching at the door of your absence. 

About Henry and the steam-engine.* I am in 

* Shelley set on foot the building of a steam-boat, to 
ply between Marseilles, Genoa, and Leghorn. Such an 
enterprise promised fortune to his friend who undertook 
to build it, and the anticipation filled him with delight. 
Unfortunately, an unforeseen complication of circum- 
stances caused the design to be abandoned, when already 
far advanced towards completion. 

I insert a letter from Mrs. Gisborne, which will explain 
some portion of this letter : — 

"My dearest Mrs. Shelley,— I began to feel a littlo 
uneasy at not hearing from you by Wednesday's post ; 
you may judge, therefore, with how much pleasure I 
received your friendly lines, informing me of your safe 
arrival, and good state of health, and that of Mr. Shelley. 
A little agitation of the nerves is a trifling evil, and was 
to be expected after such a tremendous journey for you at 
such a time ; yet you could not refrain from two littlo 
innocent quizzes, notwithstanding your hand trembling. 
I confess I dreaded the consequences when I saw the car- 
riage drive off on the rough road. Did you observe that 
foolish dog Oscar, running by your side, waving his long 
slender tail ? Giuseppe was obliged to each him up in 
his arms to stop his course ; he continued for several days 
at dinner-time to howl piteously, and to scratch with all 
his might at the door of your abandoned house. What 
a forlorn house ! I cannot bear to look at it. My last 
letter from Mr. Gisborne is dated the 4th ; he has been 
seriously indisposed ever sinGe his first attack ; he suffers 
now a return of his cough, which he can only mitigate by 
taking quantities of opium. I do not expect to see him 
till the end of the week. You see that he was not the 
person to undertake a land-journey to England by abomi- 
nable French diligences. (What says C. to the words 
abominable and French ?) I think he might have suffered 
less in a foot journey, pursued leisurely e a suo comodo. 
All's well that ends well ! Mr. G. gives a shocking 
account of Marseilles; be seems to think Tuscany a 
delightful country, compared to what he has seen of 
France. I remarked, in one of your letters, tne account 
you give of your travelling with a French voiturier, so 
unlike the obligingness we have always experienced from 
our Italian vetturini ; we have found them ever ready to 
sacrifice themselves and. their horses, sooner than do an 
uncivil thing, and distressed beyond measure at our deter- 
mination of going sometimes for miles on foot, though, at 
the same time, their beasts might scarcely have been able 
to drag the vehicle without us. This is in favour of the 
Italians ; God knows there is enough to be said against 
them. 

" Now, I will tell you the news of the steam-boat. 
The contract was drawn and signed the day after your 
departure ; the vessel to be complete, and launched, fit in 
every respect for the sea, excepting the finishing of the 
cabin, for 260 sequins. We have every reason to believe 
that the work will be well executed, and that it is an 
excellent bargain. Henry and Frankfort go on not only 
with vigour, but with fury ; the lower part of the house is 
filled with models prepared for casting, forging, &c. We 
have procured the wood for the frame from the ship 
builder on credit, so that Frankfort can go on with his 
work ; but I am sorry to say, that from this time the 
general progress of the work will be retarded for want of 



134 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



torture until this money eomes from London, 
though 1 am sore that it will and most come ; unless, 
indeed, my banker has broke, and then it will be 
im loSB, not Henry's - a little delay will mend the 
matter. 1 would then write instantly to London 
an effectual letter, and by return of post all would 
be set right— it would then be a thing easily set 
Straight -but if it were not, you know me too well 
not to know that there is no personal suffering or 
degradation, or toil, or anything that can be 
named, with which I do not feel myself bound to 
support this enterprise of Henry. But all this 
rhodomontade only shows how correct Mr. Bielby's 
advice was, about the discipline necessary for my 
imagination. No doubt that all will go on with 
mercantile and common-place exactness, and that 
you will be spared the suffering, and I the virtue, 
incident to some untoward event. 

I am anxious to hear of Mr. Gisborne's return, and 
I anticipate the surprise and pleasure with which he 
will learn that a resolution has been taken which 
leaves you nothing to regret hi that event. It is with 
unspeakable satisfaction that I reflect that my 
entreaties and persuasions overcame your scruples 
on this point, and that whatever advantage shall 
accrue from it will belong to you, whilst any 
reproach due to the imprudence of such an enter- 
prise must rest on me. I shall thus share the 
pleasure of success, and bear the blame and loss, 
(if such a thing were possible,) of a reverse ; and 
what more can a man, who is a friend to another, 
desire for himself ? Let us believe in a kind of 
optimism, in which we are our own gods. It is 
best that Mr. Gisborne should have returned ; it is 
best that I should have over-persuaded you and 
Henry ; it is best that you should all live together, 
without any more solitary attempts ; it is best that 
this one attempt should have been made, other- 
wise, perhaps, one thing which is best might not 
have occurred ; and it is best that we should think 
all this for the best, even though it is not ; because 
Hope, as Coleridge says, is a solemn duty, which 
we owe alike to ourselves and to the world — a wor- 
ship to the spirit of good within, which requires, 
before it sends that inspiration forth, which im- 

cash. The boilers might now he going on contemporane- 
ously with the casting, but I know that at present there 
is no remedy for this evil. Every person concerned is 
making exertions, and is in a state of anxiety to see the 
quick result of this undertaking. I have advanced about 
1 40 crowns, but prudence prohibits me from going any 
farther. 

"Henry will write to Mr. Shelley when the works are 
in a greater state of forwardness : in the mean time, he 
Bends his best love to his good friends, patron and 
patroness, and begs his kind remembrance to Miss C— 
I remain, with sincere affection for you all, 

" Ever yours, 

" M. G." 



presses its likeness upon all that it creates, devoted 
and disinterested homage. 

A different scene is this from that in which you 
made the chief character of our changing drama. 
We see no one, as. usual. Madame M * * * is 
quiet, and we only meet her now and then, by 
chance. Her daughter, not so fair, but I fear as 
cold, as the snowy Florimel in Spenser, is in and 

out of love with C as the winds happen to 

blow ; and C! , who, at the moment I happen to 

write, is in a high state of transitory contentment, 
is setting off to Vienna in a day or two. 

My .£100, from what mistake remains to be 
explained, has not yet arrived, and the banker here 
is going to advance me ,£50, on my bill at three 
months — all additional facilitation, should any such 
be needed, for the steam-boat. I have yet seen 
little of Florence. The gallery, I have a design of 
studying piece-meal ; one of my chief objects in 
Italy being the observing in statuary and painting 
the degree in which, and the rules according to 
which, that ideal beauty, of whieh we have so 
intense yet so obscure an apprehension, is realised 
in external forms. 

Adieu. — I am anxious for Henry's first letter. 
Give to him and take to yourself those sentiments, 
whatever they may be, with which you know that 
I cannot cease to regard you. 

Most faithfully and affectionately yours, 

P. B. S. 

I had forgotten to say that I should be very 
much obliged to you, if you would contrive to send 
The Cenci, which are at the printer's, to England, 
by the next ship. I forgot it in the hurry of 
departure. — I have just heard from P., saying, that 
he. don't think that my tragedy will do, and that 
he don't much like it. But I ought to say, to blunt 
the edge of his criticism, that he is a nursling of 
the exact and superficial school in poetry. 

If Mr. G. is returned, send the K Prometheus" 
with them. 



LETTER XXV. 
To HENRY REVELEY, Esq. 

Florence, Oct. 28, 1819. 

My dear Henry, — So it seems I am to begin 
the correspondence, though I have more to ask 
than to tell. 

You know our bargain ; you are to write me 
uncorrected letters, just as the words come, so let 
me have them — I like coin from the mint — though 
it may be a little rough at the edges ; — clipping is 
penal according to our statute. 

In the first place listen to a reproach ; you 
ought to have sent me an acknowledgement of my 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



135 



last billet. I am very happy to hear from Mr. 
Gisborne, and he knows well enough how to interest 
me himself, not to need to rob me of an occasion 
of hearing from you. Let you and I try if we 
cannot be as punctual and business-like as the best 
of them. But no clipping and coining, if you 
please. 

Now take this that I say in a light just so serious 
as not to give you pain. In fact, my dear fellow, 
my motive for soliciting your correspondence, and 
that flowing from your own mind, and clothed in 
your own words, is, that you may begin to accus- 
tom to discipline yourself in the only practice of 
life hi which you appear deficient. You know that 
you are writing to a person persuaded of all the 
confidence and respect due to your powers in those 
branches of science to which you have addicted ' 
yourself ; and you will not permit a false shame 
with regard to the mere mechanical arrangement 
of words to overbalance the advantage arising 
from the free communication of ideas. Thus you 
will become day by day more skilful in the manage- 
ment of that instrument of their communication, 
on which the attainment of a person's just rank in 
society depends. Do not think me arrogant. 
There are subjects of the highest importance in 
which you are far better qualified to instruct me, 
than I am qualified to instruct you on this sub- 
ject. 

Well, how goes on all % The boilers, the keel 
of the boat, and the cylinder, and all the other 
elements of that soul which is to guide our " mon- 
struo de fuego y agua" over the sea ? Let me hear 
news of their birth, and how they thrive after they 
are born. And is the money arrived at Mr. Webb's ? 
Send me an account of the number of crowns you 
realise ; as I think we had better, since it is a 
transaction in this country, keep our accounts in 
money of this country. 

We have rains enough to set the mills going, 
which are essential to your great iron bar. I sup- 
pose it is at present either made or making. 

My health is better so long as the scirocco blows, 
and, but for my daily expectation of Mary's con- 
finement, I should have been half tempted to have 
come to see you. As it is, I shall wait till the 
boat is finished. On the subject of your actual 
and your expected progress, you will certainly 
allow me to hear from you. 

Give my kindest regards to your mother and 
Mr. Gisborne — tell the latter, whose billet I have 
neglected to answer, that I did so, under the idea 
of addressing him in a post or two on a subject 
which gives me considerable anxiety about you 
all. I mean the continuance of your property in 
the British funds at tliis crisis of approaching 



revolution. It is the business of a friend to say 
what he thinks without fear of giving offence ; and, 
if I were not a friend, argument is worth its 
market-price anywhere. 

Believe me, my dear Henry, 

Your very faithful friend, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XXVI. 

To Mr. and Mrs. GISBORNE. 

Florence, Oct. 28, 1819. 

My dear Friends, — I receive this morning the 
strange and unexpected news, that my bill of 
£200 has been returned to Mr. Webb protested. 
Ultimately this can be nothing but delay, as I have 
only drawn from my banker's hands so much as 
to leave them still in possession of ^80, and this 
I positively know, and can prove by documents. 
By return of post, for I have not only written to 
my banker, but to private friends, no doubt Henry 
will be enabled to proceed. Let him meanwhile 
do all that can be done. 

Meanwhile, to save time, could not money be 

obtained temporarily, at Livorno, from Mr. W , 

or Mr. G , or any of your acquaintance, on my 

bills at three or six months, indorsed by Mr. 
Gisborne and Henry, so that he may go on with 
his work ? If a month is of consequence, think 
of this. 

Be of good cheer, Madonna mia, all will go well. 
The inclosed is for Henry, and was written before 
this news, as he will see ; but it does not, strange 
as it is, abate one atom of my cheer. 

Accept, dear Mr. G., my best regards. 

Yours faithfully, 
P. B. S. 



LETTER XXVII. 
To Mr. and Mrs. GISBORNE. 

Florence, Nov. 6, 1819. 

My dear Friends, — I have just finished a letter 
of five sheets on Carlile's affair, and am in hourly 
expectation of Mary's confinement : you will imagine 
an excuse for my silence. 

I forbear to address you, as I had designed, on 
the subject of your income as a public creditor of 
the English government, as it seems you have not 
the exclusive management of your funds j and the 
peculiar circumstances of the delusion are such 
that none bat a very few persons will ever be 
brought to see its instability but by the experience 
of loss. If I were to convince you, Henry would 
probably be unable to convince his uncle. In 
vindication, however, of what I have already said, 



U6 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



allow me to turn your attention to England at this 
hour. 

In order to moot the national expenses, or rather 
that boom approach towards meeting thorn might 
seem to be made, a tax of j£3,000,000 was imposed. 
The first consequence of this has boon a defalcation 
in the revenue at the rate of ,£3,600,000 a-year. 
Were the country in the most tranquil and pros- 
perous state, the minister, in such a condition of 
affaire, must reduce the interest of the national 
debt, or add to it ; a process which would only 
insure the greater ultimate reduction of the interest. 
But the people are nearly in a state of insurrection, 
and the least unpopular noblemen perceive the 
necessity of conducting a spirit, which it is no 
longer possible to oppose. For submitting to this 
necessity — which, be assured, the haughty aristo- 
crats unwillingly did — Lord FitzwiUiam has been 
degraded from his situation of Lord-Lieutenant. 
An additional army of 11,500 men has received 
orders to be organised. Everything is preparing 
for a bloody struggle, in which, if the ministers 
succeed, they will assuredly diminish the interest 
of the national debt, for no combination of the 
heaviest tyranny can raise the taxes for its pay- 
ment. If the people conquer, the public creditor 
will equally suffer ; for it is monstrous to imagine 
that they will submit to the perpetual inheritance 
of a double aristocracy. They will perhaps find 
8ome crown and church lands, and appropriate 
the tithes to make a kind of compensation to the 
public creditor. They will confiscate the estates 
of their political enemies. But all this will not 
pay a tenth part of their debt. The existing 
government, atrocious as it is, is the surest party 
to which a public creditor may attach himself. 
He may reason that it may last my time, though 
in the event the ruin is more complete than in the 
case of a popular revolution. I know you too well 
to believe you capable of arguing in this manner ; 
I only reason on how things stand. 

Your income may be reduced from ,£210 to 
150, and then £100, and then by the issue of 
immense quantities of paper to save the immediate 
cause of one of the conflicting parties, to any value 
however small ; or the source of it may be cut off 
at once. The ministers had, I doubt not, long 
since determined to establish an arbitrary govern- 
ment ; and if they had not determined so, they 
have now entangled themselves in that consequence 
of their instinct as rulers, and if they recede they 
must perish. They are, however, not receding, 
and we are on the eve of great actions. 

Kindest regards to Henry. I hope he is not 
stopped for want of money, as I shall assuredly 
send him what he wants in a month from the date 



of my last letter. I received his letter from Pistoia, 
and have no other criticism to make on it, except 
the severest — that it is too short. How goes on 
Portuguese — and Theocritus ? I have deserted 
the odorous gardens of literature, to journey across 
the great sandy desert of politics ; not, as you may 
imagine, without the hope of finding some enchanted 
paradise. In all probability, I shall be overwhelmed 
by one of the tempestuous columns which are for- 
ever traversing, with the speed of a storm, and the 
confusion of a chaos, that pathless wilderness. You 
meanwhile will be lamenting in some happy oasis 
that I do not return. This is out-Calderonizing 
Muley. We have had lightning and rain here in 
plenty. I like the Cascini very much, where I 
often walk alone, watching the leaves, and the 
rising and falling of the Arno. I am full of all 
kinds of literary plans. 

Meanwhile, all yours most faithfully, 
P. B. S. 



LETTER XXVIII. 
To LEIGH HUNT, Esq. 

Firenze, Nov. 13, 1819. 

My dear Fkiend, — Yesterday morning Mary 
brought me a little boy. She suffered but two 
hours' pain, and is now so well that it seems a 
wonder that she stays in bed. The babe is also 
quite well, and has begun to suck. You may 
imagine that this is a great relief and a great 
comfort to me amongst all my misfortunes, past, 
present, and to come. 

Since I last WTote to you, some circumstances j 
have occurred, not necessary to explain by letter, 
which makes my pecuniary condition a very painful 
one. The physicians absolutely forbid my travelling 
to England in the winter, but I shall probably pay 
you a visit in the spring. With what pleasure, 
among all the other sources of regret and dis- 
comfort with which England abounds for me, do 
I think of looking on the original of that kind and 
earnest face, which is now opposite Mary's bed. 
It will be the only thing which Mary will envy 
me, or will need to envy me, in that journey, for 
I shall come alone. Shaking hands with you is 
worth all the trouble ; the rest is clear loss. 

I will tell you more about myself and my 
pursuits in my next letter. 

Kind love to Marianne, Bessy, and all the 
children. Poor Mary begins (for the first time) 
to look a little consoled ; for we have spent, as 
you may imagine, a miserable five months. 

Good-bye, my dear Hunt. 

Your affectionate friend, P. B. S. 

I have had no letter from you for a month. 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



185 



LETTER XXIX. 
To Mrs. GISBORNE. 

Florence, Nov. 16, 1819. 
Madonna, — I have been lately voyaging in a 
sea without my pilot, and although my sail has 
often been torn, my boat become leaky, and the 
log lost, I have yet sailed in a kind of way from 
island to island ; some of craggy and mountainous 
magnificence, some clothed with moss and flowers, 
and radiant with fountains, some barren deserts. 
/ have been reading Calderon without you. I have 
read the " Cisma de Ingalaterra," the " Cabeilos 
de Absolom," and three or four others. These 
pieces, inferior to those we read, at least to the 
" Principe Constante," in the splendour of parti- 
cular passages, are perhaps superior in their 
satisfying completeness. The Cabeilos de Absolom 
is full of the deepest and tenderest touches of 
nature. Nothing can be more pathetically conceived 
than the character of old David, and the tender 
and impartial love, overcoming all insults and all 
crimes, with which he regards his conflicting and 
disobedient sons. The incest scene of Amnon and 
Tamar is perfectly tremendous. Well may Calderon 
say in the person of the former — 

Si sangre sin fuego hiere, 
que fara sangre con fuego ? 

Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very 

poetical circumstance. It may be the excess of 

love or hate. It may be the defiance of everything 

for the sake of another, which clothes itself in the 

glory of the highest heroism; or it. may be that 

cynical rage which, confounding the good and the 

bad in existing opinions, breaks through them for 

the purpose of rioting in selfishness and antipathy. 

Calderon, following the Jewish historians, has 

represented Amnon's action in the basest point of 

view — he is a prejudiced savage, acting what he 

abhors, and abhorring that which is the unwilling 

party to his crime. 

Adieu. Madonna, yours truly, 

P. B. S. 

I transcribe you a passage from the Cisma de 

Ingalaterra — spoken by "Carlos, Embaxador de 

Francia, enamorado de Ana Bolena." Is there 

anything in Petrarch finer than the second stanza.* 

* Porque apenas el Sol se coronaba 
de nueva luz en la estacion primeva, 
quando yo en sus umbrales adoraba 
segundo Sol en abreviada esfera ; 
la noche apenas tremula baxaba, 
a solos mis deseos lisonjera, 
quando un jardin, republica de flores, 
era tercero fiel de mis am ores. 



LETTER XXX. 



To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq. 



My dear Sir, — I envy you the first reading of 
Theocritus. Were not the Greeks a glorious peo- 
ple ? What is there, as Job says of the Leviathan, 
like unto them ? If the army of Nicias had not 
been defeated under the walls of Syracuse ; if the 
Athenians had, acquiring Sicily, held the balance 
between Rome and Carthage, sent garrisons to the 
Greek colonies in the south of Italy, Rome might 
have been all that its intellectual condition entitled 
it to be, a tributary, not the conqueror of Greece ; 
the Macedonian power would never have attained 
to the dictatorship of the civilised states of the 
world. Who knows whether, under the steady 
progress which philosophy and social institutions 
would have made, (for, in the age to which I refer, 
their progress was both rapid and secure) among 
a people of the most perfect physical organization, 
whether the Christian religion would have arisen, 
or the barbarians have overwhelmed the wrecks 
of civilisation which had survived the conquest and 
tyranny of the Romans % What then should we 
have been ? As it is, all of us who are worth any- 
thing, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, 
or expiating the mistakes, of our youth. We are 
stuffed full of prejudices ; and our natural passions 
are so managed, that if we restrain them we grow 
intolerant and precise, because we restrain them 
not according to reason, but according to error ; 
and if we do not restrain them, we do all sorts 
of mischief to ourselves and others. Our imagi- 
nation and understanding are alike subjected to 



Alii, el eilenoio de la noche fria, 

el jazmin, que en las redes se enlazava, 

el cristal de la fuente que corria, 

el arroyo que a solas murmurava, 

El viento que en las hojas se mo via, 

el Aura que en las flores respirava ; 

todo era amor' ; que mucho, si en tal calm a, 

aves, f uentes, y flores tienen alma ! 

No has visto providente y ofiiciosa, 
mover el ayre iluminada aveja, 
que hasta beber la fc urpura a la rosa 
ya se acerca cobarde, y ya se alexa ? 
No has visto enamorada mariposa, 
dar cercos a la luz, hasta que dexa, 
en monumento facil abrasadas 
las alas de color tornasoladas ? 

Assi mi amor, cobarde muchos dias, 
tornos hizo a la rosa y a la llama ; 
temor che ha sido entre cenizas frias, 
tantas vezes llorado de quien ama ; 
pero el amor, que vence con porfias, 
y la ocasion, que con disculpas llama, 
me animaron, y aveja y mariposa 
quern e las alas, y lleguc a la rosa. 



(38 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



rules the most absurd j — so much for Theocritus 

■Bd the Greeks.* 

In spite of all your arguments, 1 wish your 
money were out of the funds. This middle course 
which you speak of, and which may probably have 
place, will amount to your losing not all your 
income, nor retaining all, but have the half taken 
away. I feel intimately persuaded, whatever 
political forms may have place in England, that 
HO party can continue many years, perhaps not 
many months, in the administration, without 
diminishing the interest of the national debt. — 
And once having commenced — and having done 
so safely — where will it end 1 

Give Henry my kindest thanks for his most 
interesting letter, and bid him expect one from 
me by the next post. 

Mary and the babe continue well. — Last night 
we had a magnificent thunder storm, with claps 
that shook the house like an earthquake. Both 
Mary and C unite with me in kindest remem- 
brances to all. 

Most faithfully yours obliged, 

P. B. S. 

Florence, Nov. 16th, 1819. 

* I subjoin here a fragment of a letter, I know not to 
whom addressed : it is to a woman — which shows how, 
worshipping as Shelley did the spirit of the literature of 
ancient Greece, he considered that this could be found 
only in its original language, and did not consider that 
time wasted which a person who had pretensions, intel- 
lectual culture, and enthusiasm, spent in acquiring them. 

" It is probable that you will be earnest to employ the 
6acred talisman of language. To acquire these you are 
now necessitated to sacrifice many hours of the time, 
when, instead of being conversant with particles and 
verbs, your nature incites you to contemplation and 
inquiry concerning the objects which they conceal. You 
desire to enjoy the beauties of eloquence and poetry — to 
sympathise in the original language with the institutors 
and martyrs of ancient freedom. The generous and in- 
spiriting examples of philosophy and virtue, you desire 
intimately to know and feel; not as mere facts detailing 
names, and dates, and motions of the human body, but 
clothed in the very language of the actors, — that language 
dictated by and expressive of the passions and principles 
that governed their conduct. Facts are not what we want 
to know in poetry, in history, in the lives of individual 
men, in satire, or panegyric. They are the mere divisions, 
the arbitrary points on which we hang, and to whicl. we 
refer those delicate and evanescent hues of mind, which 
language delights and instructs us in precise proportion as 
it expresses. What is a translation of Homer into 
English ? A person who is ignorant of Greek, need only 
look at Paradise Lost, or the tragedy of Lear translated 
into French, to obtain an analogical conception of its 
worthless and miserable inadequacy. Tacitus, or Livius, 
or Herodotus, are equally undelightful and uninstructive 
in translation. You require to know and to be intimate 
with those persons who have acted a distinguished part to 
benefit, to enlighten, or even to pervert and injure 
humankind. Before you can do this, four years are yet to 
be consumed in the discipline of the ancient languages, 
nnd those of modern Europe, which you only imperfectly 
know, and which conceal from your intimacy such names 
&.3 Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarch, and Macchiavelli ; or Goethe, 
Kchiller, Wieland, &c. The French language you, like 
ever}' other respectable woman, already know ; and if the 



LETTER XXXI. 
To HENRY REVELEY, Esq. 

Florence,Nov. 17^. 1819. 

My dear Henry, — I was exceedingly interested 
by your letter, and I cannot but thank you for 
overcoming the inaptitude of a long disuse at my 
request, for my pleasure. It is a great thing 
done, the successful casting of the cylinder — may 
it be a happy auspice for what is to follow ! T 
hope, in a few posts, to remit the necessary money 
for the completion. Meanwhile, are not those 
portions of the work which can be done without 
expense, saving time in their progress ? Do you 
think you lose much money or time by this delay ? 

All that you say of the alteration in the form of 
the boat strikes me, though one of the multitude 
in this, respect, as improvement. I long to get 
aboard her, and be an unworthy partaker in the 
glory of the astonishment of the Livornese, when 
she returns from her cruise round Melloria. 
When do you think she will be fit for sea ? 

Your volcanic description of the birth of the 
cylinder is very characteristic of you, and of it.* 
One might imagine God, when he made the earth, 
and saw the granite mountains and flinty pro- 
great name of Rousseau did not redeem it, it would have 
been perhaps as well that you had remained entirely 
ignorant of it." 

* I insert the extract alluded to from Mr. Reveley's 
letter : — 

" Friday Yith Nov. 
" The event is now past — both the steam cylinder and 
air-pump were cast at three o'clock this afternoon. At 
two o'clock this morning I repaired to the mill to see that 
the preliminary operations, upon which the ultimate 
success of a fount greatly depends, were conducted with 
proper attention. The moulds are buried in a pit, made 
close, before the mouth of the furnace, so that the melted 
metal, when the plug is driven in, may run easily into 
them, and fill up the vacant space left between the core 
and the shell, in order to form the desired cylinders. The 
fire was lighted in the furnace at nine, and in three hours 
the metal was fused. At three o'clock it was ready to 
cast, the fusion being remarkably rapid, owing to the 
perfection of the furnace. The metal was also heated to 
an extreme degree, boiling with fury, and seeming to 
dance with the pleasure of running into its proper form. 
The plug was struck, and a massy stream of a bluish 
dazzling whiteness filled the moulds in the twinkling of a 
shooting star. The castings will not be cool enough to be 
drawn up till to-morrow afternoon; but, to judge from 
all appearances, I expect them to be perfect." 

"Saturday, 13th Nov. 
" They have been excavated and drawn up. I have 
examined them and found them really perfect ; they are 
massive and strong to bear any usage and sea-water, in 
soecula sceculorum. I am now going on gently with the 
brass-work, which does not require any immediate 
expenses, and which I attend to entirely myself. I have 
no workmen about me at present. 

'' With kindest salutations to Mrs. Shelley and Miss C, 
" I remain, most truly, 
" Your obliged friend, and devoted servant, 
" Henry W. Rjevklev." 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



139 



montories flow into their craggy forms, and the 
splendour of their fusion filling millions of miles 
of the void space, like the tail of a comet, so 
looking, so delighting in his work. God sees his 
machine spinning round the sun, and delights in 
its success, and has taken out patents to supply all 
the suns in space with the same manufacture. 
Your boat will be to the ocean of water, what this 
earth is to the ocean of other — a prosperous and 
swift voyager. 

When shall we see you all ? You not, I 
suppose, till your boat is ready to sail — and then, 
if not before, I must, of course, come to Livorno. 
Our plans for the winter are yet scarcely defined ; 
they tend towards our spending February and 
March at Pisa, where our communications will not 

be so distant, nor so epistolary. C left us a 

week ago, not without many lamentations, as all 
true lovers pay on such occasions. He is to write 
me an account of the Trieste steam-boat, which I 
will transmit to you. 

Mrs. Shelley, and Miss C return you their 

kindest salutations, with interest. 

Most affectionately yours, 
P. B. S. 



LETTER XXXII. 

To LEIGH HUNT, Esq, 

Florence, Nov. 23, 1819. 

My dear Hunt, — Wliy don't you write to us % 
I was preparing to send you something for your 
" Indicator," but I have been a drone instead of a 
bee in this business, thinking that perhaps, as you 
did not acknowledge any of my late enclosures, it 
would not be welcome to you, whatever I might 
send. 

What a state England is in ! But you will 
never write politics. I don't wonder ; but I wish, 
then, that you would write a paper in the 
" Examiner " on the actual state of the country, 
and what, under all circumstances of the conflicting 
passions and interests of men, we are to expect. 
Not what we ought to expect, nor what, if so and 
so were to happen, we might expect ; — but what, 
as things are, there is reason to believe will come ; 
— and send it me for my information. Every word 
a man has to say is valuable to the public now ; 
and thus you will at once gratify your friend, nay, 
instruct, and either exhilarate him, or force him 
to be resigned, and awaken the minds of the people. 

I have no spirits to write what I do not know 
whether you will care much about ; I know well 
that if I were in great misery, poverty, &c, you 
would think of nothing else but how to amuse and 
relieve me. You omit me if I am prosperous. 

I could laugh, if I found a joke, in order to put 



you in good-humour with me after my scolding ; 
in good humour enough to write to us. * * • 
Affectionate love to and from all. This ought not 
only to be the Vale of a letter, but a superscription 
over the gate of life. 

Your sincere friend, 

P. B. Shelley. 
I send you a sonnet. I don't expect you to pub- 
lish it, but you may show it to whom you please. 



LETTER XXXIII. 
To LEIGH HUNT, Esq. 

Florence, November, 1819. 

My dear Friend, — Two letters, both bearing 
date Oct. 20, arrive on the same day ; one is 
always glad of twins. 

We hear of a box arrived at Genoa with books 
and clothes ; it must be yours. Meanwhile the 
babe is wrapt in flannel petticoats, and we get on 
with him as we can. He is small, healthy, and 
pretty. Mary is recovering rapidly. Marianne, 
I hope, is quite well. 

You do not tell me whether you have received 
my lines on the Manchester affair. They are of 
the exoteric species, and are meant, not for the 
" Indicator," but the " Examiner." I would send 
for the former, if you like, some letters on such 
subjects of art as suggest themselves in Italy. 
Perhaps I will, at a venture, send you a specimen 
of what I mean next post. I enclose you in this a 
piece for the " Examiner," or let it share the fate, 
whatever that fate may be, of the "Masque of 
Anarchy."* 

I am sorry to hear that you have employed your- 
self in translating the " Aminta," though I doubt 
not it will be a just and beautiful translation. 
You ought to write Amintas. You ought to exer- 
cise your fancy in tire perpetual creation of new 
forms of gentleness and beauty. 

With respect to translation, even / will not 
be seduced by it ; although the Greek plays, and 
some of the ideal dramas of Calderon, (with which 
I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and 
delight, become acquainted) are perpetually tempt- 
ing me to throw over their perfect and glowing 
forms the grey veil of my own words. And you 
know me too well to suspect that I refrain from a 
belief that what I could substitute for them would 
deserve the regret which yours would, if suppressed. 
I have confidence in my moral sense alone ; but 
that is a kind of originality. I have only trans- 
lated the Cyclops of Euripides, when I could abso- 
lutely do nothing else ; and the Symposium of 

* Peter Bell the Third. 



140 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



Plato, which is the delight :uul astonishment of all 
who md it ; I meta the original, or so much of 
the original as is soon in my translation, not the 
translation itself. 

I think 1 have had an accession of strength since 
my residence in Italy, though the disease itself in 
the side, whatever it may he, is not suhdued. 
Some day we shall all return from Italy. I fear 
that in England things will be carried violently by 
the rulers, and they will not have learned to yield 
in time to the spirit of the age. The great thing to 
do is to hold the balance between popular impa- 
tience and tyrannical obstinacy ; to inculcate with 
fervour both the right of resistance and the duty 
of forbearance. You know my principles incite 
me to take all the good I can get in politics, for 
ever aspiring to something more. I am one of 
those whom nothing will fully satisfy, but who are 
ready to be partially satisfied in all that is prac- 
ticable. We shall see. 

Give Bessy a thousand thanks from me for 
writing out in that pretty neat hand your kind and 
powerful defence. Ask what she would like best 
from Italian land. We mean to bring you all 
something ; and Mary and I have been won- 
dering what it shall be. Do you, each of you, 
choose. 

Adieu, my dear friend. 

Yours affectionately ever, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XXXIV. 
To HENRY REVELEY, Esq. 

Florence, 18th Bee. 1819. 

My dear Henry, — You see, as I said, it only 
amounts to delay, all this abominable entanglement. 
I send you 484 dollars, or ordinary francesconi, I 
suppose, but you will tell me what you receive in 
Tuscan money, if they are not— 4he produce of 
i£100. So my heart is a little lightened, which, I 
assure you, was heavy enough until this moment, 
on your account. I write to Messrs. Ward to 
pay you. 

I have received no satisfactory letter from my 
bankers, but I must expect it every week — or, at 
least, in a month from tins date, when I will not 
fail to transmit you the remainder of what may be 
necessary. 

Everybody here is talking of a steam-ship which 
is building at Leghorn ; one person said, as if he 
knew the whole affair, that he was waiting in 
Tuscany to take his departure to Naples in it. 
Your name has not, to my knowledge, been 
mentioned. I think you would do well to en- 
courage this publicity. 

I have better health than I have known for a 



long time — ready for any stormy cruise. When 
will the ship be ready to sail i We have been 
feeding ourselves with the hope that Mr. Gisborne 
and your mother would have paid us their 
promised visit. I did not even hope, perhaps not 
even wish, that you should, until the engine is 
finished. My regret at this failure has several 
times impelled me to go to Leghorn — but I have 
always resisted the temptation. Ask them, entreat 
them, from me, to appoint some early day. We 
have a bed and room, and everything prepared. 

I write in great haste, as you may see. Ever 
believe me, my dear Henry, your attached friend, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER XXXV. 

To Mr. and Mrs. GISBORNE. 

Florence, Dec. 23d, 1819. 

My dear Friends, — I suffered more pain than 
it would be manly to confess, or than you can 
easily conceive, from that wretched uncertainty 
about the money. At last, however, it is certain 
that you will encounter no further check in the 
receiving supplies, and a weight is taken from my 
spirits, which, in. spite of many other causes of 
discomfort, makes itself known to have been a 
heavy load, by the lightness which I now feel in 
writing to you. 

So the steamboat will take three months to 
finish \ The vernal equinox will be over by that 
time, and the early wakening of the year have 
paved the Mediterranean with calm. Among 
other circumstances to regret in this delay, it is 
so far well that our first cruise will be made in 
serene weather. 

I send you enclosed a mandate for 396 fran- 
cesconi, which is what M. Torlonia incorrectly 
designates a hundred pounds — but as we count 
in the money of the country, that need make 
no difference to us. 

I have just finished an additional act to 
" Prometheus," which Mary is now transcribing, 
and which will be enclosed for your inspection 
before it is transmitted to the bookseller. I am 
engaged in a political work — I am busy enough, 
and if the faculties of my mind were not im- 
prisoned within a mind, whose bars are daily 
cares and vulgar difficulties, I might yet do some- 
thing — but as it is — 

Mary is well — but for this affair in London I 
think her spirits would be good. What shall I — 
what can I — what ought I to do ? You cannot 
picture to yourself my perplexity. 



Adieu, my dear friends. 

Ever yours, faithfully attached, 



P. B. S. 



LETTERS FROM ITALY 



141 



LETTER XXXVL 
To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq. 

My dear Sir, — We have suddenly taken the 
determination to avail ourselves of this lovely 
weather to approach you as far as Pisa. I need 
not assure you — unless my malady should violently 
return — you will see me at Leghorn. 

We embark ; and I promise myself the delight 
of the 9ky, the water, and the mountains. I must 
suffer at any rate, but I expect to suffer less in a 
boat than in a carriage. I have many things to 
say, which let me reserve till we meet. 

I sympathise in all your good news, as I have 
done in your ill. Let Henry take care of himself, 
and not, desiring to combine too many advantages, 
check the progress of his recovery,- the greatest 
of all. 

Remember me affectionately to him and to Mrs. 
Gisborne, and accept for yourself my unalterable 
sentiments of regard. Meanwhile, consider well 
your plans, which I only half understand. 

Ever most faithfully yours, 
P. B. Shelley. 
Florence, 25th Jan., 1820. 



REMARKS 

ON SOME OF THE STATUES IN THE GALLERY 

OF FLORENCE. 

THE NTOBE. 

Of all that remains to us of Greek antiquity, 
this figure is perhaps the most consummate 
personification of loveliness, with regard to its 
countenance, as that of the Venus of the Tribune 
is with regard to its entire form of a woman. It is 
colossal : the size adds to its value ; because it 
allows the spectator the choice of a greater 
number of points of view, and affords him a more 
analytical one, in which to catch a greater number 
of the infinite modes of expression, of which any 
form approaching ideal beauty is necessarily com- 
posed. It is the figure of a mother in the act of 
sheltering, from some divine and inevitable peril, 
the last, we may imagine, of her surviving 
children. 

The little creature, terrified, as we may conceive, 
at the strange destruction of all its kindred, has 
fled to its mother, and is hiding its head in the 
folds of her robe, and casting back one arm, as in 
a passionate appeal for defence, where it never 
before could have been sought in vain. She is 
clothed in a thin tunic of delicate woof; and her 
hair is fastened on her head into a knot probably 
bv that mother whose care will never fasten it 



again. Niobe is enveloped in profuse drapery, a 
portion of which the left band lias gathered up, 
and is in the act of extending it over the child in 
the instinct of shielding her from what reason 
knows to be inevitable. The right (as the re- 
storer has properly imagined), is drawing up her 
daughter to her ; and with that instinctive gesture, 
and by its gentle pressure, is encouraging the child 
to believe that it can give security. The coun- 
tenance of Niobe is the consummation of feminine 
majesty and loveliness, beyond which the imagina- 
tion scarcely doubts that it can conceive anything. 

That masterpiece of the poetic harmony of 
marble expresses other feelings. There is embodied 
a sense of the inevitable and rapid destiny which 
is consummating around her, as if it were already 
over. It seems as if despair and beauty had 
combined, and produced nothing but the sublimity 
of grief. As the motions of the form expressed 
the instinctive sense of the possibility of protecting 
the child, and the accustomed and affectionate 
assurance that she would find an asylum within 
her arms, so reason and imagination speak in the 
countenance the certainty that no mortal defence 
is of avail. There is no terror in the countenance, 
only grief — deep, remediless grief. There is no 
anger : — of what avail is indignation against what 
is known to be omnipotent ? There is no selfish 
shrinking from personal pain — there is no panic 
at supernatural agency — there is no adverting to 
herself as herself ; the calamity is mightier than 
to leave scope for such emotions. 

Everything is swallowed up in sorrow ; she is 
all tears ; her countenance, in assured expectation 
of the arrow piercing its last victim in her embrace, 
is fixed on her omnipotent enemy. The pathetic 
beauty of the expression of her tender, and inex- 
haustible, and unquenchable despair, is beyond the 
effect of any other sculpture. As soon as the arrow 
shall pierce her last tie upon earth, the fable that 
she was turned into stone, or dissolved into a 
fountain of tears, will be but a feeble emblem of 
the sadness of hopelessness, in which the few and 
evil years of her remaming fife, we feel, must flow 
away. 

It is difficult to speak of the beauty of the 
countenance, or to make intelligible in words, 
from what such astonishing loveliness results. 

The head, resting somewhat backward upon the 
full and flowing contour of the neck, is as in the 
act of watching an event momently to arrive. The 
hair is delicately divided on the forehead, and a 
gentle beauty gleams from the broad and clear 
forehead, over which its strings are drawn. The 
face is of an oval fulness, and the features con* 
ceived with the daring of a sense of power. In 



us 



UK MARKS ON SOME OF THE STATUES 



this roped it resembles the careless majesty which 
Nature stamps upon the rare masterpieces of her 

creation. harmonizing thorn as it were from the 
harmony of the spirit within. Yet all this not 
only oonaista with, but is the cause of, the subtlest 

delicacy of clear and tender beauty — the expression 
at once of innocence and sublimity of soul — of 
purity and strength— of all that which touches the 
most removed and divine of the chords that make 
music in our thoughts — of that which shakes with 
astonishment even the most superficial. 



THE MINERVA. 

The head. is of the highest beauty. It has a close 
helmet, from which the hair, delicately parted on 
the forehead, half escapes. The attitude gives 
entire effect to the perfect form of the neck, and to 
that full and beautiful moulding of the lower part 
of the face and mouth, which is in living beings 
the seat of the expression of a simplicity and 
integrity of nature. Her face, upraised to heaven, 
is animated with a profound, sweet, and impas- 
sioned melancholy, with an earnest, and fervid, 
and disinterested pleading against some vast and 
inevitable wrong. It is the joy and poetry of 
sorrow, making grief beautiful, and giving it that 
nameless feeling which, from the imperfection of 
language, we call pain, but which is not all pain, 
through a feeling which makes not only its possessor, 
but the spectator of it, prefer it to what is called 
pleasure, in which all is not pleasure. It is difficult 
to think that this head, though of the highest ideal 
beauty, is the head of Minerva, although the 
attributes and attitude of the lower part of the 
statue certainly suggest that idea. The Greeks 
rarely, in their representations of the characters 
of their gods, — unless we call the poetic enthu- 
siasm of Apollo a mortal passion, — expressed the 
disturbance of human feeling ; and here is deep 
and impassioned grief animating a divine counte- 
nance. It is, indeed, divine. Wisdom (which 
Minerva may be supposed to emblem) is pleading 
earnestly with Power, — and invested with the 
expression of that grief, because it must ever 
plead so vainly. The drapery of the statue, the 
gentle beauty of the feet, and the grace of the 
attitude, are what may be seen in many other 
statues belonging to that astonishing era which 
produced it ; — such a countenance is seen in few. 

This statue happens to be placed on a pedestal, 
the subject of whose reliefs is in a spirit wholly the 
reverse. It was probably an altar to Bacchus — 
possibly a funeral urn. Under the festoons of 
fruits and flowers that grace the pedestal, the 
corners of which are ornamented with the skulls 
of goats, are sculptured some figures of Mtenads 



under the inspiration of the god. Nothing can 
be conceived more wild and terrible than their 
gestures, touching, as they do, the verge of dis- 
tortion, into which their fine limbs and lovely 
forms are thrown. There is nothing, however, 
that exceeds the possibility of nature, though it 
borders on the utmost line. 

The tremendous spirit of superstition, aided by 
drunkenness, producing something beyond insanity, 
seems to have caught them in its whirlwinds, and 
to bear them over the earth, as the rapid volutions 
of a tempest have the ever-changing trunk of a 
waterspout, or as the torrent of a mountain river 
whirls the autumnal leaves resistlessly along in its 
full eddies. The hair, loose and floating, seems 
caught in the tempest of their own tumultuous 
motion ; their heads are thrown back, leaning with 
a strange delirium upon their necks, and looking 
up to heaven, whilst they totter and stumble even 
i in the energy of their tempestuous dance. 

One represents Agave with the head of Pentheus 
in one hand, and in the other a great knife ; a 
second has a spear with its pine cone, which was 
the Thyrsus ; another dances with mad volup- 
tuousness ; the fourth is beating a kind of 
tambourine. 

This was indeed a monstrous superstition, even 
in Greece, where it was alone capable of combining 
ideal beauty, and poetical and abstract enthusiasm, 
with the wild errors from which it sprung. In 
Rome it had a more familiar, wicked, and dry 
appearance ; it was not suited to the severe and 
exact apprehensions of the Romans, and their 
strict morals were violated by it, and sustained a 
deep injury, little analogous to its effects upon the 
Greeks, who turned all things — superstition, pre- 
judice, murder, madness — to beauty. 



ON THE VENUS, CALLED ANADYOMENE. 

She has just issued from the bath, and is yet 
animated with the enjoyment of it. 

She seems all soft and mild enjoyment, and the 
curved lines of her fine limbs flow into each other 
with a never-ending sinuosity of sweetness. Her 
face expresses a breathless, yet passive and inno- 
cent voluptuousness, free from affectation. Her 
lips, without the sublimity of lofty and impetuous 
passion, the grandeur of enthusiastic imagination 
of the Apollo of the Capitol, or the union of both, 
like the Apollo Belvidere, have the tenderness of 
arch, yet pure and affectionate, desire ; and the 
mode in which the ends of the mouth are drawn 
in, yet lifted or half-opened, with the smile that 
for ever circles round them, and the tremulous 
curve into which they are wrought by inex- 
tinguishable desire, and the tongue lying against 



IN THE GALLERY OF FLORENCE. 



143 



the lower lip, as in the listlessness of passive joy, 
express love, still love. 

Her eyes seem heavy and swimming with plea- 
sure, and her small forehead fades on both sides 
into that sweet swelling and thin declension of the 
bone over the eye, in the mode which expresses 
simple and tender feelings. 

The neck is full, and panting as with the 
aspiration of delight, and flows with gentle curves 
into her perfect form. 

Her form is indeed perfect. She is half-sitting 
and half-rising from a shell, and the fulness of her 
limbs, and their complete roundness and perfection, 
do not dimmish the vital energy with which they 
seem to be animated. The position of the arms, 
which are lovely beyond imagination, is natural, 
unaffected, and easy. This, perhaps, is the finest 
personification of Venus, the deity of superficial 
desire, in all antique statuary. Her pointed and 
pear-like person, ever virgin, and her attitude 
modesty itself. 



A BAS-RELIEF : 

PROBABLY THE SICES OF A SARCOPHAGUS. 

The lady is lying on a couch, supported by a 
young woman, and looking extremely exhausted ; 
her dishevelled hair is floating about her shoulders, 
and she is half-covered with drapery that falls on 
the couch. 

Her tunic is exactly like a chemise, only the 
sleeves are longer, coming half way down the upper 
part of the arm. An old wrinkled woman, with a 
cloak over her head, and an enormously sagacious 
look, has a most professional appearance, and is 
taking hold of her arm gently with one hand, and 
with the other is supporting it. I think she is 
feeling her pulse. At the side of the couch sits a 
woman as in grief, holding her head in her hands. 
At the bottom of the bed is another matron tear- 
ing her hair, and in the act of screaming out most 
violently, which she seems, however, by the rest 
of her gestures, to do with the utmost deliberation, 
as having come to the resolution, that it was a 
correct thing to do so. Behind her is a gossip of 
the most ludicrous ugliness, crying, I suppose, or 
praying, for her arms are crossed upon her neck. 
There is also a fifth setting up a wail. To the 
left of the couch a nurse is sitting on the ground 
dandling the child in her arms, and wholly occu- 
pied in so doing. The infant is swaddled. Behind 
her is a female who appears to be in the act of 
rushing in with dishevelled hair and violent ges- 
ture, and in one hand brandishing a whip or a 
thunderbolt. This is probably some emblematic 
person, the messenger of death, or a fury, whose 
personification would be a key to the whole. What 



they are all wailing at, I know not ; whether the 
lady is dying, or the father has directed the child 
to be exposed : but if the mother be not dead, 
such a tumult would kill a woman hi the straw in 
these days. 

The other compartment, in the second scene of 
the drama, tells the story of the presentation of 
the child to its father. An old man has it in his 
arms, and, with professional and mysterious offi- 
ciousness, is holding it out to the father. The 
father, a middle-aged and very respectable-looking 
man, perhaps not long married, is looking with 
the admiration of a bachelor on his first child, and 
perhaps thinking that he was once such a strange 
little creature himself. His hands are clasped, 
and he is gathering up between his arms the folds 
of his cloak ; an emblem of his gathering up all 
his faculties, to understand the tale the gossip is 
bringing. 

An old man is standing beside him, probably his 
father, with some curiosity, and much tenderness 
in his looks. Around are collected a host of his 
relations, of whom the youngest, a handsome girl, 
seems the least concerned. It is altogether an 
admirable piece, quite in the spirit of the comedies 
of Terence. 



MICHAEL ANG-ELO S BACCHUS. 

The countenance of this figure is a most revolt- 
ing mistake of the spirit and meaning of Bacchus, 
It looks drunken, brutal, narrow-minded, and has 
an expression of dissoluteness the most revolting; 
The lower part of the figure is stiff, and the manner 
in which the shoulders are united to the breast, 
and the neck to the head, abundantly inharmo- 
nious. It is altogether without unity, as was the 
idea of the deity of Bacchus in the conception of 
a Catholic. On the other hand, considered only 
as a piece of workmanship, it has many merits. 
The arms are executed in a style of the most per- 
fect and manly beauty. The body is conceived 
with great energy, and the manner in which the 
lines mingle into each other, of the highest bold- 
ness and truth. It wants unity as a work of art 
— as a representation of Bacchus it wants every- 
thing 

A JUNO. 

A statue of great merit. The countenance 
expresses a stern and unquestioned ' severity of 
dominion, with a certain sadness. The lips are 
beautiful — susceptible of expressing scorn — but not 
without sweetness. With fine lips a p erson is neve 
wholly bad, and they never belong to the expres- 
sion of emotions wholly selfish— lips being the seat 
of imagination. The drapery is finely conceived 



144 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



and the manner in which the net of throwing back 
one lag is expressed, in the diverging folds of the 

drapery of the left hveast fading in hold yet gra- 
duated lines into a skirt, as it descends from the 
left shoulder, is admirably imagined. 



AN APOLLO, 

With serpents twining round a wreath of laurel, 
on which the quiver is suspended. It probahly 
was, when complete, magnificently beautiful. The 
restorer of the head and arms, following the indi- 
cation of the muscles on the right side, has lifted 
the arm as in triumph at the success of an arrow, 
imagining to imitate the Lycian Apollo, in that so 
finely described by Apollonius Rhodius, when the 
dazzling radiance of his limbs shone over the 
Euxine. The action, energy, and godlike anima- 
tion of these limbs, speak a spirit which seems as 
if it could not be consumed. 



LETTER XXXVII. 
To Mr. and Mrs. GISBORNE. 

Pisa, 9th Feb., 1820. 

Pray let us see you soon, or our threat may cost 
both us and you something — a visit to Livorno. 
The stage direction on the present occasion is, 
(exit Moonshine) and enter Wall ; or rather four 
walls, who surround and take prisoners the Galan 
and Dama. 

Seriously, pray do not disappoint us. We shall 
watch the sky, and the death of the scirocco must 
be the birth of your arrival. 

Mary and I are going to study mathematics. 
We design to take the most compendious, yet 
certain methods of arriving at the great results. 
We believe that your right-angled Triangle will 
contain the solution of the problem of how to 
proceed. 

Do not write, but come. Mary is too idle to 
write, but all that she has to say is come. She 
joins with me in condemning the moonlight plan. 
Indeed we ought not to be so selfish as to allow 
you to come at all, if it is to cost you all the fa- 
tigue and annoyance of returning the same night. 
But it will not be — so adieu. 



LETTER XXXVIII. 

To Mk. and Mrs. GISBORNE. 

Pisa, April 23, 1820. 
My dear Friends, — We were much pained 
to hear of the illness you all seem to have been 
suffering, and still more at the apparent dejection 
of your last letter. We are in daily expectation 
this lovely weather of seeing you, and I think the 



change of nir and scene might be good for your 
health and spirits, even if we cannot enliven you. 
I shall have some business at Livorno soon ; and 
I thought of coming to fetch you, but I have 
changed my plan, and mean to return with you, 
that I may save myself two journeys. 

I have been thinking, and talking, and reading, 
Agriculture this last week. But I am very 
anxious to see you, especially now as instead 
of six hours, you give us thirty-six, or perhaps 
more. I shall hear of the steam-engine, and you 
will hear of our plans when we meet, which will 
be in so short a time, that I neither inquire nor 
communicate. 

Ever affectionately yours, 

P. B. Shelley. 



LETTER XXXIX. 
To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq. 

(LONDON.) 

Pisa, May 26th, 1820. 

My dear Friends,— I write to you thus early, 
because I have determined to accept of your kind 
offer about the correction of " Prometheus." The 
bookseller makes difficulties about sending the 
proofs to me, and to whom else can I so well 
entrust what I am so much interested in having 
done well ; and to whom would I prefer to owe the 
recollection of an additional kindness done to me ? 
I enclose you two little papers of corrections and 
additions ; — I do not think you will find any diffi- 
culty in interpolating them into their proper 
places. 

Well, how do you like London, and your jour- 
ney ; the Alps in their beauty and their eternity ; 
Paris in its slight and transitory colours ; and the 
wearisome plains of France — and the moral people 
with whom you drank tea last night ? Above all, 
how are you? And of the last question, believe 
me, we are now most anxiously waiting for a reply 
— until which I will say nothing, nor ask anything. 
I rely on the journal with as much security as if 
it were already written. 

I am just returned from a visit to Leghorn, 
Casciano, and your old fortress at Sant' Elmo. I 
bought the vases you saw for about twenty sequins 
less than Micale asked, and had them packed up, 
and, by the polite assistance of your friend, Mr. 
Guebhard, sent them on board. I found your 
Giuseppe very useful in all this business. He got 
me tea and breakfast, and I slept in your house, 
and departed early the next morning for Casciano. 
Everything seems in excellent order at Casa Ricci 
— garden, pigeons, tables, chairs, and beds. As I 
did not find my bed sealed up, I left it as I found 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



145 



it. What a glorious prospect you had from the 
windows of Sant' Elmo ! The enormous chain of 
the Apennines, with its many- folded ridges, 
islanded in the misty distance of the air ; the sea, 
so immensely distant, appearing as at your feet ; 
and the prodigious expanse of the plain of Pisa, 
and the dark green marshes lessened almost to a 
strip hy the height of the blue mountains over- 
hanging them. Then the wild and unreclaimed 
fertility of the foreground, and the chesnut trees, 
whose vivid foliage made a sort of resting-place to 
the sense before it darted itself to the jagged 
horizon of this prospect. I was altogether de- 
lighted. I had a respite from my nervous symp- 
toms, which was compensated to me by a violent 
cold in the head. There was a tradition about 
you at Sant' Elmo — An English family that had 
lived here in the time of the French. The doctor, 
too, at tho Bagni, knew you. The house is in a 
most dilapidated condition, but I suppose all that 
is curable. 

We go to the Bagni * next month — but still 
direct to Pisa as safest. I shall write to you the 
ultimates of my commission in my next letter. I 
am undergoing a course of the Pisan baths, on 
which I lay no singular stress — but they soothe. I 
ought to have peace of mind, leisure, tranquillity ; 
this I expect soon. Our anxiety about Godwin is 
very great, and any information that you could 
give a day or two earlier than he might, respecting 
any decisive event in his law-suit, would be a great 
relief. Your impressions about Godwin, (I speak 
especially to Madonna mia, who had known him 
before), will especially interest me. You know 
that added years only add to my admiration of his 
intellectual powers, and even the moral resources 
of his character. Of my other friends I say 
nothing. To see Hunt is to like him ; and there 
is one other recommendation which he has to you, 

he is my friend. To know H , if any one can 

know liim, is to know something very unlike, and 
inexpressibly superior, to the great mass of men. 

Will Henry write me an adamantine letter, 
flowing not like the words of Sophocles, with 
honey, but molten brass and iron, and bristling 
with wheels and teeth % I saw his steam-boat 
asleep under the walls. I was afraid to waken it, 
and ask it whether it was dreaming of him, for 
the same reason that I would have refrained from 
awakening Ariadne, after Theseus had left her — 
unless I had been Bacchus. 

Affectionately and anxiously yours, 

P. B. S. 

* Baths of natural warm springs, distant four miles 
*rom Pisa, and called indifferently Bagni di Pisa, and 
Bagni di San Giuliano. 



LETTER XL. 
To Mr. and Mrs. GISBORNE. 

(LONDON.) 

My dear Friends, — I am to a certain degree 
indifferent as to the reply to our last proposal, 
and, therefore, will not allude to it. Permit me 
only on subjects of this nature to express one 
sentiment, which you would have given me credit 
lor, even if not expressed. Let no considerations 
of my interest, or any retrospect to the source 
from which the funds were supplied, modify 
your decision as to returning and pursuing or 
abandoning the adventure of the steam-engine. 
My object was solely your true advantage, and 
it is when I am baffled of tliis, by any attention 
to a mere form, that I shall be ill requited. Nay, 
more, I think it for your interest, should you 
obtain almost whatever situation for Henry, to 
accept Clementi's proposal, and remain in Eng- 
land ; — not without accepting it, for it does no 
more than balance the difference of expense be- 
tween Italy and London ; and if you have any 
trust in the justice of my moral sense, and believe 
that in what concerns true honour and virtuous 
conduct in life, I am an experienced counsellor, 
you will not hesitate — these things being equal — 
to accept this proposal. The opposition I made, 
while you were in Italy, to the abandonment of 
the steam-boat project, was founded, you well 
know, on the motives which have influenced every- 
thing that ever has guided, or ever will guide any- 
thing that I can do or say respecting you. I 
thought it against Henry's interest. I think it 
now against his interest that he and you should 
abandon your prospects in England. As to us — 
we are uncertain people, who are chased by the 
spirits of our destiny from purpose to purpose, like 
clouds by the wind. 

There is one thing more to be said. If you 
decide to remain in England, assuredly it would 
be foolish to return. Your journey would cost 
you between ^100 and .£200, a sum far greater 
than you could expect to save by the increased 
price by which you would sell your things. Remit 
the matter to me, and I will cast off my habitual 
character, and attend to the minutest points. With 

Mr. G 's, devil take his name, I can't write it, 

— you know who's, assistance, all this might be 
accomplished in such a manner as to save a very 
considerable sum. Though I shall suffer from 
your decision in the proportion as your society is 
delightful to me, I cannot forbear expressing my 
persuasion, that the time, the expense, and the 
trouble of returning to Italy, if your ultimate 



146 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



decision be to settle in London, ought all to be 
spared. A year, a month, a week, at Henry's 
age, and with his purposes, ought not to be unem- 
ployed. It was the depth with which I felt this 
trnth, which impelled me to incite him to this 
adventure of the steam-boat. 



LETTER XLI. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

(LEGHORN.) 

My dear Love, — I believe I shall have taken a 
very pleasant and spacious apartment at the Bagni 
for three months. It is as all the others are — 
dear. I shall give forty or forty-five sequins for 
the three months, but as yet I do not know which. 
I could get others something cheaper, and a great 
deal worse ; but if we would write, it is requisite to 
have space. 

To-morrow evening, or the following morning, 

you will probably see me. T is planning a 

journey to England to secure his property in the 
event of a revolution, which, he is persuaded, is on 
the eve of exploding. I neither believe that, nor 
do I fear that the consequences will be so imme- 
diately destructive to the existing forms of social 
order. Money will be delayed, and the exchange 
reduced very low, and my annuity and ****, on 
account of these being money, will be in some 
danger ; but land is quite safe. Besides, it will not 
be so rapid. Let us hope we shall have a reform. 

T will be lulled into security, while the slow 

progress of things is still flowing on, after this 
affair of the Queen may appear to be blown over. 
There are bad new T s from Palermo : the soldiers 
resisted the people, and a terrible slaughter, 
amounting, it is said, to four thousand men, ensued. 
The event, however, was as it should be. Sicily, 
like Naples, is free. By the brief and partial 
accounts of the Florence paper, it appears that the 
enthusiasm of the people was prodigious, and that 
the women fought from the houses, raining down 
boiling oil on the assailants. 

I am promised a bill on Vienna on the 5th, the 
day on which my note will be paid, and the day on 
which I purpose to leave Leghorn. **** is very 
unhappy at the idea of T.'s going to England, 
though she seems to feel the necessity of it. Some 
time or other he must go to settle his affairs, and 
they seem to agree that this is the best opportunity. 
/ have no thought of leaving Italy. The best thing 
we can do is to save money, and, if things take 
a decided turn, (which I am convinced they will 
at last, but not perhaps for two or three years,) 
it will be time for me to assert my rights, and 



preserve my annuity. Meanwhile, another event 

may decide us. Kiss sweet babe, and kiss yourself 

for me — I love you affectionately. P. B. S. 

Casa Silva, 
Sunday morning, -20th July, 1821. 

I have taken the house for forty sequins for three 
months — a good bargain, and a very good house as 
things go — this is about thirteen sequins a month. 
To-morrow I go to look over the inventory ; expect 
me therefore on Tuesday morning. 

Sunday evening. 



LETTER XLII. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

(BAGNI DI SAN GlULfANO.) 

I am afraid, my dearest, that I shall not be able 
to be with you so soon as to-morrow evening, 
though I shall use every exertion. Del Rosso I 
have not seen, nor shall until this evening. Jack- 
son I have, and he is to drink tea with us this 
evening, and bring the Constitutionnel. 

You will have seen the papers, but I doubt that 
they will not contain the latest and most important 
news. It is certain, by private letters from mer- 
chants, that a serious insurrection has broken out 
at Paris, and the reports last night are, that an 
attack made by the populace on the Tuileries still 
continued when the last accounts came away. At 
Naples the constitutional party have declared to 
the Austrian minister, that if the Emperor should 
make war on them, their first action would be to 
put to death all the members of the royal family 
— a necessary and most just measure, when the 
forces of the combatants, as well as the merits of 
their respective causes, are so unequal. That 
kings should be everywhere the hostages for liberty 
were admirable. 

What will become of the Gisbornes, or of the 
English, at Paris ? How soon will England itself, 
and perhaps Italy, be caught by the sacred fire ? 
And what, to come from the solar system to a 
grain of sand, shall we do ? 

Kiss babe for me, and your own self. I am 
somewhat better, but my side still vexes me— a 
little. Your affectionate S. 

ILeghorn], Casa Ricci, Sept. 1st, 1820. 



LETTER XLIII. 
To the EDITOR of the " QUARTERLY REVIEW." 
Sir, — Should you cast your eye on the signature 
of this letter before you read the contents, you 
might imagine that they related to a slanderous 
paper which appeared in your Review some time 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



147 



since. I never notice anonymous attacks. The 
wretch who wrote it has doubtless the additional 
reward of a consciousness of his motives, besides 
the thirty guineas a sheet, or whatever it is that 
you pay him. Of course you cannot be answerable 
for all the writings which you edit, and / certainly 
bear you no ill-will for having edited the abuse to 
which I allude — indeed, I was too much amused by 
being compared to Pharaoh, not readily to forgive 
editor, printer, publisher, stitcher, or any one, 
except the despicable writer, connected with some- 
thing so exquisitely entertaining. Seriously speak- 
ing, I am not in the habit of permitting myself to 
be disturbed by what is said or written of me, 
though, I dare say, I may be condemned sometimes 
justly enough. But I feel, in respect to the writer 
in question, that " I am there sitting, where he 
durst not soar." 

The case is different with the unfortunate subject 
of this letter, the author of Endymion, to whose 
feelings and situation I entreat you to allow me to 
call your attention. I write considerably in the 
dark ; but if it is Mr. Gifford that I am addressing, 
I am persuaded that in an appeal to his humanity 
and justice, he will acknowledge the fas ab hoste 
doceri. I am aware that the first duty of a Reviewer 
is towards the public, and 1 am willing to confess 
that the Endymion is a poem considerably defective, 
and that, perhaps, it deserved as much censure as 
the pages of your Review record against it ; but, 
not to mention that there is a certain contemptu- 
ousness of phraseology from which it is difficult for 
a critic to abstain, in the review of Endymion, I 
do not think that the writer has given it its due 
praise. Surely the poem, with all its faults, is a 
very remarkable production for a man of Keats's 
age, and the promise of ultimate excellence is such 
as has rarely been afforded even by such as have 
afterwards attained high literary eminence. Look 
at book ii. line 833, &c, and book iii. line 113 to 
120 — read down that page, and then again from 
line 193. I could cite many other passages, to 
convince you that it deserved milder usage. Why 
it should have been reviewed at all, excepting for 
the purpose of bringing its excellences into notice, 
I cannot conceive, for it was very little read, and 
there was no danger that it should become a model 
to the age of that false taste, with which I confess 
that it is replenished. 

Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of 
mind by this review, which, I am persuaded, was 
not written with any intention of producing the 
effect, to which it has, at least, greatly contributed, 
of embittering his existence, and inducing a disease 
from which there are now but faint hopes of his 
recovery. The first effects are described to me to 



have resembled insanity, and it was by assi<: 
watching that he was restrained from effet 
purposes of suicide. The agony of his suffering 
length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the 
lungs,and the usual process of consumption epp 
to have begun. He is coining to pay me a visit in 
Italy ; but I fear that unless his mind can be kejit 
tranquil, little is to be hoped from the mere influ- 
ence of climate. 

But let me not extort anything from your pity. 
I have just seen a second volume, published by 
him evidently in careless despair. I have desired 
my bookseller to send you a copy, and allow me to 
solicit your especial attention to the fragment of 
a poem entitled "Hyperion," the composition of 
which was checked by the Review in question. 
The great proportion of this piece is surely in the 
very highest style of poetry. I speak impartially, 
for the canons of taste to which Keats has con- 
formed in his other compositions are the very 
reverse of my own. I leave you to judge for your- 
self : it would be an insult to you to suppose that 
from motives, however honourable, you would 
lend yourself to a deception of the public. 
***** 
(This letter was never sent.) 



LETTER XLIV. 
To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq. 

(AT LEGHORN.) 

Pisa, oggi, (November, 1820.) 

My hear Sir, — I send you the Phsedon and 
Tacitus. I congratulate you on your conquest of 
the Iliad. You must have been astonished at the 
perpetually increasing magnificence of the last 
seven books. Homer there tndy begins to be him- 
self. The battle of the Scamander, the funeral of 
Patroclus, and the high and solemn close of the 
whole bloody tale in tenderness and inexpiable 
sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparable 
with anything of the same kind. The Odyssey is 
sweet, but there is. no tiling like this. 

/ am bathing myself in the light and odour of 
the flowery and starry Autos. I have read them 
all more than once. Henry will tell you how 
much I am in love with Pacchiani. I suffer from 
my disease considerably. Henry will also tell you 
how much, and how whimsically, he alarmed me 
last night. 

My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Gisbornc, 
and best wishes for your health and happiness. 
Faithfully yours, 

P. B. S. 

I have a new Calderon coming from Paris. 



148 



LETTER* FROM ITALY. 



LETTER XI.V. 
To IIKNUV REYBLE1 

Mv DBAS Hr.MiY, — Our ducking last night has 
added fire, instead of (pleaching the nautical 
ardour which produced it ; and I consider it a 
good omen in any enterprise, that it begins in 
evil ; as being more probable that it will end in 
good. I hope you have not suffered from it. I 
am rather feverish, but very well as to the side, 
whence I expected the worst consequences. I 
send you directions for the complete equipment of 
our boat, since you have so kindly promised to 
undertake it. In putting into execution, a little 
more or less expense in so trifling an affair, is to 
be disregarded. I need not say that the approach- 
ing season invites expedition. You can put her in 
hand immediately, and write the day on which we 
may come for her. 

We expect with impatience the arrival of our 
false friends, who have so long cheated us with 
delay ; and Mary unites with me in desiring, that, 
as you participated equally in the crime, you should 
not be omitted in the expiation. 
All good be with you. — Adieu. Yours faithfully, S. 

Williams desires to be kindly remembered to 
you, and begs to present bis compliments to Mr. 

and Mrs. G , and — heaven knows what. 

Pisa, Tuesday, 1 o'clock, 17th April, 1821. 



LETTER XLVI. 
To HENRY REYELEY, Esq. 

Pisa, April I9lh. 

My dear Hexry, — The rullock, or place for 
the oar, ought not to be placed where the oar- 
pins are now, but ought to be nearer to the mast ; 
as near as possible, indeed, so that the rower has 
room to sit. In addition let a false keel be made 
in this shape, so as to be four inches deep at the 
stern, and to decrease towards the prow. It may 
be as thin as you please. 

Tell Mr. and Mrs. G that I have read the 

Numancia, and after wading through the singular 
stupidity of the first act, began to be greatly de- 
lighted, and, at length, interested in a very high 
degree, by the power of the writer in awakening 
pity and admiration, in which I hardly know by 
whom he is excelled. There is little, I allow, 
in a strict sense, to be called poetry in this play ; 
but the command of language, and the harmony of 
versification, is so great as to deceive one into an 
idea that it is poetry. 

Adieu. — We shall see you soon. 

Yours ever truly, S. 



LETTER XLVII. 

To Mr. and Mms. GISBORNE. 

Bagni, Tuesday Evening, 
(June 5th, 1821.) 

My bear Friends, — We anxiously expect your 
arrival at the Baths ; but as I am persuaded that 
you will spend as much time with us as you can 
save from your necessary occupations before your 
departure, I will forbear to vex you with impor- 
tunity. My health does not permit me to spend 
many hours from home. I have been engaged 
these last days in composing a poem on the death 
of Keats, which will shortly be finished ; and I 
anticipate the pleasure of reading it to you, as 
some of the very few persons who will be inter- 
ested in it and understand it. It is a highly- 
wrought piece of art, and perhaps better, in point 
of composition, than anything I have written. 

I have obtained a purchaser for some of the arti- 
cles of your three lists, a catalogue of which I sub- 
join. I shall do my utmost to get more ; could you 
not send me a complete fist of your furniture, as I 
have had inquiries made about chests of drawers, &c. 

My unfortunate box ! it contained a chaos of 
the elements of " Charles I." If the idea of the 
creator bad been packed up with them, it would 
have shared the same fate ; and that, I am afraid, 
has undergone another sort of shipwreck. 

Very faithfully and affectionately yours, S. 



LETTER XL VIII. 
To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq. 
Mt dear Friend, — I have received the heart- 
rending account of the closing scene of the great 
genius whom envy and ingratitude scourged out 
of the world.* I do not think that if I had seen 



* The following is the account alluded to : — 

" Wednesday, 13th Jan., 1821. 

" My dearest Frtekds, — I have this moment received 
a letter from Mr. Finch, which contains some circum- 
stances relative to Keats. I would not delay commu- 
nicating them to you, and I hope to be in time for the 
Procaccino, though it is already half past twelve. I hope 
Mr. S. received my long despatch a few days since. 

" Ever yours, " J. G." 

" 'I hasten to communicate to you what I know about 
the latter period and closing scene of the pilgrimage of 
the original poet from whose works, hitherto unseen by 
me, you have favoured me with such a beautiful quotation. 
Almost despairing of his case, he left his native shores 
by sea, in a merchant vessel for Naples, where he arrived, 
having received no benefit during the passage, and brooding 
over the most melancholy and mortifying reflections ; and 
nursing a deeply-rooted disgust to life and to the world, 
owing to having been infamously treated by the very 
persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and 
woe. He journeyed from Naples to Rome, and occupied, 
at the latter place, lodgings which I had, on former occa- 
sions, more than once inhabited. Here he soon took to 
his bed, from which he never rose more. His passions 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



149 



it before, I could have composed my poem. The 
enthusiasm of the imagination would have over- 
powered the sentiment. 

As it is, I have finished my Elegy ; and this 
day I send it to the press at Pisa. You shall have 
a copy the moment it is completed. I think it 
will please you. I have dipped my pen hi con- 
suming fire for his destroyers ; otherwise the 
style is calm and solemn. 

Pray, when shall we see you ? Or are the 
streams of Helicon less salutary than sea-bathing 
for the nerves ? Give us as much as you can 
before you go to England, and rather divide the 
term than not come soon. 

Mrs. wishes that none of the books, desk, 

&c, should be packed up with the piano ; but 
that they should be sent} one by one, by Pepi. 
Address them to me at her house. She desired me 
to have them addressed to m€, why I know not. 

A droll circumstance has occurred. Queen Mab, 
a poem written by me when very young, in the 
most furious style, with long notes against Jesus 
Christ, and God the Father, and the king, and 
bishops, and marriage, and the devil knows what, 
is just published by one of the low booksellers in 
the Strand, against my wish and consent, and all 
the people are at loggerheads about it. H. S. 
gives me this account. You may imagine how 
much I am amused. For the sake of a dignified 
appearance, however, and really because I wish 
to protest against all the bad poetry in it, I have 
given orders to say that it is all done against my 
desire, and have directed my attorney to apply to 
Chancery for an injunction, which he will not get. 

I am pretty ill, I thank you, just now ; but I 
hope you aiie better. 

Most affectionately yours, P. B. S. 
Pisa. Saturday, (June I6lh, 1821.) 

were always violent, and his sensibility most keen. It is 
extraordinary that, proportionally as his strength of body 
declined, these acquired fresh vigour ; and his temper at 
length became so outrageously violent, as to injure him- 
self, and annoy every one around him. He eagerly wished 
for death. After leaving England, I believe that he seldom 
courted the muse. He was accompanied by a friend of 
mine, Mr. Severn, a young painter, who will, I think, one 
day be the Coryphaeus of the English school. He left all, 
and sacrificed every prospect, to accompany and watoh 
over his friend Keats. For many weeks previous to his 
death, he would see no one but Mr. Severn, who had 
almost risked his own life, by unwearied attendance upon 
his friend, who rendered his situation doubly unpleasant 
by the violence of his passions exhibited even towards 
him, so much, that he might be judged insane. His 
intervals of remorse, too, were poignantly bitter. I be- 
lieve that Mr. Severn, the heir of what little Keats left 
behind him at Rome, has only come into possession of 
very few manuscripts of his friend. You will be pleased 
with the information that the poetical volume, which was 
the inseparable companion of Keats, and which be took 
for his most darling model in composition, was, the Minor 
Poems of Shakspeare.' " 



LETTER XLIX. 

To Mr. and Mrs. GISI30RNE. 

Daf/>ii, Friday Night, 
(July 13th, 1821.) 

My dear Friends, — I have been expecting 
every day a writ to attend at your court at 
Guebhard's, whence you know it is settled that 
I should conduct you hither to spend your last 
days in Italy. A thousand thanks for your maps ; 
hi return for which I send you the only copy of 
" Adonais " the printer has yet delivered I wish 1 
could say, as Glaucus could, in the exchange for 
the arms of Diomed, — kKar6fifiioi ivvea&olwp. 

I will only remind you of " Faust ; " my desire 
for the conclusion of which is only exceeded by my 
desire to welcome you. Do you observe any traces 
of him in the poem I send you ? Poets — the best 
of them, are a very cameleonic race ; they take 
the colour not only of what they feed on, but of 
the very leaves under which they pass. 

Mary is just on the verge of finishing her 
novel ; but it cannot be in time for you to take 
to England. — Farewell. 

Most faithfully yours, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER L. 

To Mr. and Mrs. GISBORNE. 
My dearest Friends, — I am fully repaid for 
the painful emotions from which some verses of 
my poem sprang, by your sympathy and appro- 
bation — which is all the reward I expect — and as 
much as I desire. It is not for me to judge 
whether, in the high praise your feelings assign 
me, you are right or wrong. The poet and the 
man are two different natures ; though they exist 
together, they may be unconscious of each other, 
and incapable of deciding on each other's powers 
and efforts by any reflex act. The decision of the 
cause, whether or no / am a poet, is removed from 
the present time to the hour when our posterity 
shall assemble ; but the court is a very severe 
one, and I fear that the verdict will be, * Guilty — 
death!" 

I shall be with you on the first summons. I hope 
that the time you have reserved for us, " this bank 
and shoal of time," is not so short as you once 
talked of. 

In haste, most affectionately yours, 

P. B. S. 
Bagni, July \Wi. 



I. SO 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



LETTER LI. 

To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

(BAQNI DI PISA.) 

Tuesday, Liont Bianco, Florence, 
[August 1st, 101.) 

My dearest Love, — I shall not return this 
evening ; nor, unless I have better success, to- 
morrow. I have seen many houses, but very few 
within the compass of our powers ; and, even in 
those which seem to suit, nothing is more difficult 
than to bring the proprietors to terms. I congra- 
tulate myself on having taken the season in time, 
as there is great expectation of Florence being full 
next winter. I shall do my utmost to return 
to-morrow evening. You may expect me about 
ten or eleven o'clock, as I shall purposely be late, 
to spare myself the excessive heat. 

The Gisbornes (four o'clock, Tuesday,) are just 
set out in a diligence-and-four, for Bologna. They 
have promised to write from Paris. I spent three 
hours this morning principally in the contemplation 
of the Niobe, and of a favourite Apollo ; all worldly 
thoughts and cares seem to vanish from before 
the sublime emotions such spectacles create ; and 
I am deeply impressed with the great difference of 
happiness enjoyed by those who live at a distance 
from these incarnations of all that the finest minds 
have conceived of beauty, and those who can resort 
to their company at pleasure. What should we 
think if we were forbidden to read the great writers 
who have left us their works ? And yet to be 
forbidden to live at Florence or Rome, is an evil 
of the same kind, of scarcely less magnitude. 

I am delighted to hear that the W.'s are with 
you. I am convinced that Williams must persevere 
hi the use of the doccia. Give my most affectionate 
remembrances to them. I shall know all the houses 
in Florence, and can give W. a good account of 
them all. You have not sent my passport, and I 
must get home as I can. I suppose you did not 
receive my note. 

I grudge my sequins for a carriage ; but I have 
suffered from the sun and the fatigue, and dare 
not expose myself to that which is necessary for 
house-hunting. 

Kiss little babe, and how is he % but I hope to 
see him fast asleep to-morrow night. And pray, 
dearest Mary, have some of your novel prepared 
for my return. 

Your ever affectionate S. 



LETTER LII. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

(BAGNI DI PISA.) 

Bologna, Agosto 6. 

Dearest mine, — I am at Bologna, and the cara- 
tella is ordered for Ravenna. I have been detained, 
by having made an embarrassing and inexplicable 
arrangement, more than twelve horn's ; or I should 
have arrived at Bologna last night instead of this 
morning. 

Though I have travelled all night at the rate 
of two miles and a half an hour, in a little open 
calesse, I am perfectly well in health. One would 
think that I were the spaniel of Destiny, for the 
more she knocks me about, the more I fawn on 
her. I had an overturn about day-break ; the 
old horse stumbled, and threw me and the fat 
vetturino into a slope of meadow, over the hedge. 
My angular figure stuck where it was pitched ; 
but my vetturino's spherical form rolled fairly to 
the bottom of the bill, and that with so few symp- 
toms of reluctance in the life that animated it, 
that my ridicule (for it was the drollest sight in 
the world) was suppressed by my fear that the 
poor devil had been hurt. But he was very well, 
and we continued our journey with great success. 

My love to the Williams's. Kiss my pretty one, 
and accept an affectionate one for yourself from 
me. The chaise waits. I will write the first night 
from Ravenna at length. Y T ours ever, S. 



LETTER LIII. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

Ravenna, August 7, 1821. 

My dearest Mart, — I arrived last night at ten 
o'clock, and sate up talking with Lord Byron until 
five this morning. I then went to sleep, and now 
awake at eleven, and having despatched my break- 
fast as quick as possible, mean to devote the interval 
until twelve, when the post departs, to you. 

Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted to 
see me. He has in fact completely recovered his 
health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that 
which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort 
of liaison with Contessa Guiccioli, who is now at 
Florence, and seems from her letters to be a very 
amiable woman. She is waiting there until some- 
thing shall be decided as to their emigration to 
Switzerland or stay in Italy ; which is yet unde- 
termined on either side. She was compelled to 
escape from the Papal territory in great haste, as 
measures had already been taken to place her in 
a convent, where she would have been unrelent- 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



151 



ingly confined for life. The oppression of the 
marriage contract, as existing in the laws and 
opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, 
is far severer than that of England. I tremhle to 
think of what poor Emilia is destined to. 

Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself in 
Venice : his state of debility was such that he was 
unable to digest any food, he was consumed by hectic 
fever, and would speedily have perished, but for 
this attachment, which has reclaimed him from the 
excesses into which he threw himself from careless- 
ness and pride, rather than taste. Poor fellow ! 
he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and 
literature. He has given me a number of the 
most interesting details on the former subject, but 
we will not speak of them in a letter. Fletcher is 
here, and as if like a shadow, he waxed and waned 
with the substance of his master : Fletcher also 
has recovered Ins good looks, and from amidst the 
unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest of flaxen 
locks put forth. 

We talked a great deal of poetry, and such 
matters last night ; and as usual differed, and I 
think more than ever. He affects to patronise a 
system of criticism fit for the production of medio- 
crity, and although all his fine poems and passages 
have been produced in defiance of this system, yet 
I recognise the pernicious effects of it in the Doge 
of Venice ; and it will cramp and limit his future 
j efforts however great they may be, unless he gets 
rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather 
he himself read them to me, and gave me the plan 
of the whole. 

Lord Byron has also told me of a circumstance 
that shocks me exceedingly ; because it exhibits a 
degree of desperate and wicked malice for winch I 
am at a loss to account. When I hear such things 
my patience and my philosophy are put to a severe 
proof, whilst I refrain from seeking out some 
obscure hiding-place, where the countenance of 
man may never meet me more. 
* * * * Imagine my despair of 

good, imagine how it is possible that one of so weak 
and sensitive a nature as mine can run further the 
gauntlet through this hellish society of men. You 
should write to the Hoppners a letter refuting the 
charge, in case you believe, and know, and can 
prove that it is false ; stating the grounds and 
proofs of your belief. I need not dictate what you 
should say ; nor, I hope, inspire you with warmth 
to rebut a charge, which you only can effectually 
rebut. If you will send the letter to me here, I 
will forward it to the Hoppners. Lord Byron is 
not up, I do not know the Hoppners' address, and 
I am anxious not to lose a post. 



LETTER LIV. 

To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

Thursday, 8th Augutt. 
My dearest Mary, — I wrote to you yesterday, 
and I begin another letter to-day, without knowing 
exactly when I can send it, as I am told the post 
only goes once a week. I dare say the subject of 
the latter half of my letter gave you pain, but it 
was necessary to look the affair in the face, and the 
only satisfactory answer to the calumny must be 
given by you, and could be given by you alone. 
This is evidently the source of the violent denun- 
ciations of the Literary Gazette, in themselves 
contemptible enough, and only to be regarded as 
effects, which show us their cause, which until we 
put off our mortal nature, we never despise — that 
is, the belief of persons who have known and seen 
you, that you are guilty of crimes. 

After having sent my letter to the post yesterday, 
I went to see some of the antiquities of this place ; 
which appear to be remarkable. This city was once 
of vast extent, and the traces of its remains are 
to be found more than four miles from the gate of 
the modern town. The sea, which once came close 
to it, has now retired to the distance of four miles, 
leaving a melancholy extent of marshes, inter- 
spersed with patches of cultivation, and towards 
the seashore with pine forests, which have fol- 
lowed the retrocession of the Adriatic, and the 
roots of which are actually washed by its waves. 
The level of the sea and of this tract of country 
correspond so nearly, that a ditch dug to a few feet 
in depth, is immediately filled up with sea water. 
All the ancient buildings have been choked up to 
the height of from five to twenty feet by the de- 
posit of the sea, and of the inundations, which are 
frequent in the winter. I went in L. B.'s carriage, 
first to the Chiesa San Vitale, which is certainly 
one of the most ancient churches in Italy. It is a 
rotunda, supported upon buttresses and pilasters 
of white marble ; the ill effect of which is some- 
what relieved by an interior row of columns. 
The dome is very high and narrow. The whole 
church, in spite of the elevation of the soil, is very 
high for its breadth, and is of a very peculiar and 
striking construction. In the section of one of 
the large tables of marble with which the church is 
lined, they showed me the perfect figxtre, as perfect 
as if it had been painted, of a capuchin friar, 
wliich resulted merely from the shadings and the 
position of the stains in the marble. This is what may 
be called a pure anticipated cognition of a Capuchin. 

I then went to the Tomb of Theodosius, which 
, I 



152 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



lias now boon dedicated to the Virgin, without, 

however, any change in its original appearance. 

It is about ■ mile from the present city. This 
building is more than half overwhelmed by the 
elevated soil, although a portion of the lower 
story has been excavated, and is tilled with brack- 
ish and stinking waters, and a sort of vaporous 
darkness, and troops of prodigious frogs. It is 
a remarkable piece of architecture, and without 
belonging to a period when the ancient taste yet 
survived, bears, nevertheless, a certain impression 
of that taste. It consists of two stories ; the lower 
supported on Doric arches and pilasters, and a 
simple entablature. The other circular within, 
and polygonal outside, and roofed with one single 
mass of ponderous stone, for it is evidently one, 
and Heaven alone knows how they contrived to 
lift it to that height. It is a sort of flattish dome, 
rough-wrought within by the chisel, from which 
the Northern conquerors tore the plates of silver 
that adorned it, and polished without, with things 
like handles appended to it, which were also 
wrought out of the solid stone, and to which I 
suppose the ropes were applied to draw it up 
You ascend externally into the second story by a 
flight of stone steps, which are modern. 

The next place I went to, was a church called 
la cliiesa di San? Appolinare, which is a Basilica, 
and built by one, I forget whom, of the Christian 
Emperors ; it is a long church, with a roof like a 
barn, and supported by twenty-four columns of 
the finest marble, with an altar of jasper, and four 
columns of jasper, and giallo antico, supporting 
the roof of the tabernacle, which are said to be of 
immense value. It is something like that church 
(I forget the name of it) we saw at Rome, fuore 
delle mura.* I suppose the emperor stole these 
columns, which seem not at all to belong to the 
place they occupy. Within the city, near the 
church of San Vitale, there is to be seen the tomb 
of the Empress Galla Placidia, daughter of Theo- 
dosius the Great, together with those of her 
husband Constantius, her brother Honorius and 
her son Valentinian — all Emperors. The tombs 
are massy cases of marble, adorned with rude and 
tasteless sculpture of lambs, and other Christian 
emblems, with scarcely a trace of the antique. It 
seems to have been one of the first effects of the 
Christian religion to destroy the power of pro- 
ducing beauty in art. These tombs are placed in 
a sort of vaulted chamber, wrought over with rude 
mosaic, which is said to have been built in 1300. 
I have yet seen no more of Ravenna. 

* San Paolo fuore delle mura— burnt down, and its 
beautiful columns calcined by the fire, in 1U23 — now 
rebuilt. 



Friday. 

We ride out in the evening, through the pine 
forests which divide this city from the sea. Our 
way of life is this, and I have accommodated 
myself to it without much difficulty : — L. B. gets 
up at two, breakfasts ; we talk, read, &c, until 
six ; then we ride, and dine at eight ; and after 
dinner sit talking till four or five in the morning. 
I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the in- 
terval between my rising and his, to you. 

L. B. is greatly improved in every respect. In 
genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, in 
happiness. The connexion with la Guiccioli has 
been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives in 
considerable splendour, but within his income, 
which is now about ,£4000 a-year ; ,£100 of which 
he devotes to purposes of charity. He has had 
mischievous passions, but these he seems to have 
subdued, and he is becoming what he should be, a 
virtuous man. The interest which he took in the 
politics of Italy, and the actions he performed in 
consequence of it, are subjects not fit to be written, 
but are such as will delight and surprise you. He 
is not yet decided to go to Switzerland — a place, 
indeed, little fitted for him : the gossip and the 
cabals of those anglicised coteries would torment 
him, as they did before, and might exasperate him 
into a relapse of libertinism, which he says he 
plunged into not from taste, but despair. La 
Guiccioli and her brother (who is L. B.'s friend 
and confidant, and acquiesces perfectly in her 
connexion with him,) wish to go to Switzerland ; as 
L. B. says, merely from the novelty of the pleasure 
of travelling. L. B. prefers Tuscany or Lucca, 
and is trying to persuade them to adopt his views. 
He has made me write a long letter to her to engage 
her to remain — an odd thing enough for an utter 
stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy 
to his friend's mistress. But it seems destined 
that I am always to have some active part in every 
body's affairs whom I approach. I have set down 
in lame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think 
of against the Swiss emigration — to tell you truth, 
I should be very glad to accept, as my fee, his 
establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna is a miserable 
place ; the people are barbarous and wild, and 
their language the most infernal patois that you 
can imagine. He would be, in every respect, 
better among the Tuscans. I am afraid he would 
not like Florence, on account of the English there. 
There is Lucca, Florence, Pisa, Siena, and I think 
nothing more. What think you of Prato, or 
Pistoia, for him ? — no Englishman approaches 
those towns ; but I am afraid no house could be 
found good enough for him in that region. 

He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos 






LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



153 



of Don Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets 
him not only above, but far above, all the poets of 
the day — every word is stamped with immortality. 
I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, 
and there is no other with whom it is worth con- 
tending. This canto is in the style, but totally, 
and sustained with incredible ease and power, 
like the end of the second canto. There is not a 
word which the most rigid asserter of the dignity 
of human nature would desire to be cancelled. 
It fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long 
preached of producing — something wholly new 
and relative to the age, and yet surpassingly beau- 
tiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the 
trace of my earnest exhortations to him to create 
something wholly new. He has finished his life 
up to the present time, and given it to Moore, with 
liberty for Moore to sell it for the best price he 
can get, with condition that the bookseller should 
publish it after his death. Moore has sold it to 
Murray for two thousand pounds. I have spoken 
to him of Hunt, but not with a direct view of de- 
manding a contribution ; and, though I am sure 
that if asked it would not be refused — yet there is 
something in me that makes it impossible. Lord 
Byron and I are excellent friends, and were I 
reduced to poverty, or were I a writer who had no 
claims to a higher station than I possess — or did I 
possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear 
in all things as such, and I would freely ask him 
any favour. Such is not the case. The demon of 
mistrust and pride lurks between two persons in 
our situation, poisoning the freedom of our inter- 
course. This is a tax, and a heavy one, which we 
must pay for being human. I think the fault is 
not on my side, nor is it likely, I being the weaker. 
I hope that in the next world these things will be 
better managed. What is passing in the heart of 
another*, rarely escapes the observation of one who 
is a strict anatomist of his own. 

Write to me at Florence, where I shall remain 
a day at least, and send me letters, or news of 
letters. How is my little darling ? And how are 
you, and how do you get on with your book ? Be 
severe in your corrections, and expect severity 
from me, your sincere admirer. I flatter myself 
you have composed something unequalled in its 
kind, and that, not content with the honours of 
your birth and your hereditary aristocracy, you 
will add still higher renown to your name. Expect 
me at the end of my appointed time. I do not 
think I shall be detained. Is C. with you, or is 
she coming ? Have you heard anything of my 
poor Ernilia, from whom I got a letter the day of 
my departure, saying, that her marriage was de- 
ferred for a very short time, on account of the 



illness of her sposo. How are the Williams's, 
ami Williams especially ? Give my very kindest 
love to them. 

Lord B. has here splendid apartments in the 
house of his mistress's husband, who is one of the 
richest men in Italy. She is divorced, with an 
allowance of 1200 crowns a-year, a miserable pit- 
tance from a man who has 120,000 a-year. — Here 
are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten 
horses, all of whom, (except the horses), walk 
about the house like the masters of it. Tita the 
Venetian is here, and operates as my valet ; a fine 
fellow, with a prodigious black beard, and who has 
stabbed two or three people, and is one of the 
most good-natured looking fellows I ever saw. 

We have good rumours of the Greeks here, and 
a Russian war. I hardly wish the Russians to 
take any part in it. My maxim is with JEschylus : 
— rb dvcraefies — fiera /j.ev ir\siova riKrei, cnpeTe'pct 
SeiKOTa ysvva. There is a Greek exercise for you. 
How should slaves produce anything but tyranny 
— even as the seed produces the plant ? 

Adieu, dear Mary. Yours affectionately, S. 



LETTER LV. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

Saturday —Ravenna. 

My dear Mart, — You will be surprised to hear 
that L. B. has decided upon coming to Pisa, in 
case he shall be able, with my assistance, to pre- 
vail upon his mistress to remain in Italy, of which 
I think there is little doubt. He wishes for a 
large and magnificent house, but he has furniture 
of his own, which he would send from Ravenna. 
Inquire if any of the large palaces are to be let. 
We discussed Prato, Pistoia, Lucca, &c, but they 
would not suit him so well as Pisa, to which, 
indeed, he shows a decided preference. So let it 
be ! Florence he objects to, on account of the 
prodigious influx of English. 

I don't think this circumstance ought to make 
any difference in our own plans with respect to 
this winter in Florence, because we could easily 
reassume our station with the spring, at Pugnano 
or the baths, in order to enjoy the society of the 
noble lord. But do you consider this point, and 
write to me your full opinion, at the Florence 
post-office. 

I suffer much to-day from the pain in my side, 
brought on, I believe, by this accursed water. In 
other respects, I am pretty well, and my spirits 
are much improved ; they had been improving, 
indeed, before I left the baths, after the deep 
dejection of the early part of the year. 

I am reading "Anastasius." One would think that 



154 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



1 . B. had taken his idea of the throe last oantos 
ol Don Juan from this hook. That, of course, 
li as nothing to do with the merit of this latter, 
) ,»etrv baring nothing to do with the invention of 
It is a very powerful, and very entertain- 
ing novel, and a faithful picture, they say, of 
modern Greek manners. I have read L. B.'s 
hotter to Bowles : some good things — hut he ought 
not to write prose criticism. 

You will receive a long letter, sent with some of 
L B.'s, express to Florence. I write this in haste. 
Yours most affectionately, S. 



LETTER LVL 

To Mrs SHELLEY. 

Ravenna, Tuesday, August 15th, 1821. 

My dearest Love, — I accept your kind present 
of your picture, and wish you would get it prettily 
framed for me. I will wear, for your sake, upon my 
heart this image which is ever present to my mind. 

I have only two minutes to write, the post is 
just setting off. I shall leave this place ou 
Thursday or Friday morning. You would forgive 
me for my longer stay, if you knew the fighting 1 
have had to make it so short. I need not say 
where my own feelings impel me. 

It still remains fixed that L. B. should come to 
Tuscany, and, if possible, Pisa ; but more of that 
to-morrow. 

Your faithful and affectionate S. 



LETTER LVII. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

Wednesday, Ravenna. 

My dearest Love, — I write, though I doubt 
whether I shall not arrive before this letter ; as 
the post only leaves Ravenna once a week, on 
Saturdays, and as I hope to set out to-morrow 
evening by the courier. But as I must necessarily 
stay a day at Florence, and as the natural inci- 
dents of travelling may prevent me from taking 
my intended advantage of the couriers, it is pro- 
bable that this letter will arrive first. Besides, as 
I will explain, I am not yet quite my own master. 
But that by and bye. I do not think it necessary 
to tell you of my impatience to return to you and 
my little darling, or the disappointment with which 
I have prolonged my absence from you. I am 
happy to think that you are not quite alone. 

Lord Byron is still decided upon Tuscany : and 
such is his impatience, that he has desired me — 
as if I should not arrive in time — to write to you 



to inquire for the best unfurnished palace in Pisa, 
and to enter upon a treaty for it. It is better not 
to be on the Lung' Arno ; but, in fact, there is no 
such hurry, and as I shall see you so soon, it is 
not worth while to trouble yourself about it. 

I told you I had written by L. B.'s desire to la 
Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from 
Switzerland. Her answer is this moment arrived, 
and my representation seems to have reconciled 
them to the unfitness of that step. At the con- 
clusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she 
says she has heard of me, is this request, which 
I transcribe ; — " Signore — la vostra bonta mi fa 
ardita di chiedervi wifavore — me lo accorderete voi ? 
Non partite da Ravenna senza Milord." Of course, 
being now, by all the laws of knighthood, captive 
to a lady's request, I shall only be at liberty on 
my parole, until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa. 
I shall reply, of course, that the boon is granted, 
and that if her lover is reluctant to quit Ravenna, 
after I have made arrangements for receiving him 
at Pisa, 1 am bound to place myself in the same 
situation as now, to assail him with importunities 
to rejoin her. Of this there* is, fortunately, no 
need ; and I need not tell you there is no fear 
that this chivalric submission of mine to the great 
general laws of antique courtesy, against which I 
never rebel, and which is my religion, should 
interfere with my quick returning, and long re- 
maining with you, dear girl. 

I have seen Dante's tomb, and worshipped the 
sacred spot. The building and its accessories are 
comparatively modern, but, the urn itself, and the 
tablet of marble, with his portrait in relief, are 
evidently of equal antiquity with his death. The 
countenance has all the marks of being taken from 
his own ; the lines are strongly marked, far more 
than the portraits, which, however, it resembles ; 
except, indeed, the eye, which is half closed, and 
reminded me of Pacchiani. It was probably taken 
after death. I saw the library, and some speci- 
mens of the earliest illuminated printing from the 
press of Faust. They are on vellum, and of an 
execution little inferior to that of the present day. 

We ride out every evening as usual, and practise 
pistol-shooting at a pumpkin ; and I am not sorry 
to observe, that I approach towards my noble 
friend's exactness of aim. The water here is vil- 
lanous, and I have suffered tortures ; but I now 
drink nothing but alcalescent water, and am much 
relieved. I have the greatest trouble to get away ; 
and L. B., as a reason for my stay, has urged, 
that, without either me or the Guiccioli, he will 
certainly fall into his old habits. I then talk, and 
he listens to reason ; and I earnestly hope that 
! he is too well aware of the terrible and degrad 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



I5fi 



ing consequences of his former mode of life, to be 
in danger from the short interval of temptation 
that will be left him. L. B. speaks with gi'eat 
kindness and interest of you, and seems to wish to 
see you. 

Thursday, Ravenna, 

I have received your letter with that to Mrs. 
Hoppner. I do not wonder, my dearest friend, 
that you should have been moved. I was at first, 
but speedily regained the indifference which the 
opinion of anything, or anybody, except our own 
consciousness, amply merits ; and day by day 
shall more receive from me. I have not recopied 
your letter ; such a measure would destroy its 
authenticity, but have given it to Lord Byron, 
who has engaged to send it with his own comments 
to the Hoppners. People do not hesitate, it seems, 
to make themselves panders and accomplices to 
slander, for the Hoppners had exacted from Lord 
Byron that these accusations should be concealed 
from me. Lord Byron is not a man to keep a 
secret, good or bad ; but in openly confessing that 
he has not done so, he must observe a certain 
delicacy, and therefore wished to send the letter 
himself, and indeed this adds weight to your repre- 
sentations. Have you seen the article in the 
Literary Gazette on me ? They evidently allude 
to some story of this kind — however cautious the 
Hoppners have been in preventing the calumni- 
ated person from asserting his justification, you 
know too much of the world not to be certain that 
this was the utmost limit of their caution. So 
much for nothing. 

Lord Byron is immediately coming to Pisa*. He 
will set off the moment I can get him a house. 
Who would have imagined this ? Our first thought 

ought to be , our second our own plans. The 

hesitation in your letter about Florence has com- 
municated itself to me ; although I hardly see 
what we can do about Horace Smith, to whom our 
attentions are so due, and would be so useful. If 
I do not arrive before this long scrawl, write 
something to Florence to decide me. I shall cer- 
tainly, not without strong reasons, at present sign 
the agreement for the old codger's house ; although 
the extreme beauty and fitness of the place, should 
we decide on Florence, might well overbalance 
the objection of your deaf visitor. One thing — 
with Lord Byron and the people we know at Pisa, 
we should have a security and protection, which 
seems to be more questionable at Florence. But 
I do not think that this consideration ought to 
weigh. What think you of remaining at Pisa 1 
The Williams's would probably be induced to stay 
there if we did ; Hunt would certainly stay, at 
least this whiter, near us, should he emigrate at 



all ; Lord Byron and his Italian friends would 
remain quietly there ; and Lord Byron has cer- 
tainly a great regard for us — the regard of such a 
man is worth — some of the tribute we must pay 
to the base passions of humanity in any inter- 
course with those within their circle ; he is better 
worth it than those on Whom we bestow it from 

mere custom. The are there, and as far as 

solid affairs are concerned, are my friends. * * 
* * * At Pisa I need not distil my water — if 
I can distil it anywhere. Last whiter I suffered 
less from my painful disorder than the whiter I 
spent at Florence. The arguments for Florence 
you know, and they are very weighty ; judge 
(7 Tcnow you like the job;) which scale is over- 
balanced. 

My greatest content would be utterly to desert 
all human society. I would retire with you and 
our child to a solitary island in the sea, would 
build a boat, and shut upon my retreat the flood- 
gates of the world. I would read no reviews, and 
talk with no authors. If I dared trust my imagi- 
nation, it would tell me that there are one or two 
chosen companions beside yourself whom I should 
desire. But to this I would not listen — where two 
or three are gathered together, the devil is among 
them. And good, far more than evil impulses, 
love, far more than hatred, has been to me, except 
as you have been its object, the source of all sorts 
of mischief. So on this plan, I would be alone, 
and would devote, either to oblivion or to future 
generations, the overflowings of a mind which, 
timely withdrawn from the contagion, should be 
kept fit for no baser object. But this it does not 
appear that we shall do. 

The other side of the alternative (for a medium 
ought not to be adopted) is to form for ourselves a 
society of our own class, as much as possible in 
intellect, or in feelings ; and to connect ourselves 
with the interests of that society. Our roots never 
struck so deeply as at Pisa, and the transplanted 
tree flourishes not. People who lead the fives 
which we led until last winter, are like a family 
of Wahabee Arabs, pitching their tent in the 
midst of London. We must do one thing or the 
other — for yourself, for our child, for our existence. 
The calumnies, the sources of which are probably 
deeper than we perceive, have ultimately, for 
object, the depriving us of the means of security 
and subsistence. You will easily perceive the 
gradations by which calumny proceeds to pretext, 
pretext to persecution, and persecution to the ban 
of fire and water. It is for this, and not because 
this or that fool, or the whole court of fools, curse 
and rail, that calumny is worth refuting or 
chastising. 



156 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



LETTER LY111. 
To LBXGB BUNT, Esq. 

Pita, August 26th, 1821. 

My dkabbh Friend, — Since I last wrote to you, 
1 have boon on a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna. 
Tlio result of this visit was a determination, on his 
part, to come and livo at Pisa ; and I have taken 
the finest palace on the Lnng' Arno for him. But 
the material part of my visit consists in a message 
which he desires me to give you, and which, I 
think, ought to add to your determination — for 
such a one I hope you have formed, of restoring 
your shattered health and spirits by a migration 
to these "regions mild of calm and serene air." 

He proposes that you should come and go shares 
with him and me, in a periodical work, to be 
conducted here ; in which each of the contracting 
parties should publish all their original compo- 
sitions, and share the profits. He proposed it to 
Moore, but for some reason it was never brought 
to bear. There can be no doubt that the profits of 
any scheme in which you and Lord Byron engage, 
must, from various, yet co-operating reasons, be 
very great. As for myself, I am, for the present, I 
only a sort of link between you and him, until 
you can know each other, and effectuate the 
arrangement ; since (to entrust you with a secret 
which, for your sake, I withhold from Lord Byron) 
nothing would induce me to share in the profits, 
and still less, in the borrowed splendour of such a 
partnership. You and he, in different manners, 
would be equal, and would bring, in a different 
manner, but in the same proportion, equal stocks 
of reputation and success. Do not let my frank- 
ness with you, nor my belief that you deserve it 
more than Lord Byron, have the effect of deterring 
you from assuming a station in modern literature, 
which the universal voice of my contemporaries 
forbids me either to stoop or to aspire to. I am, 
and I desire to be, nothing. 

I did not ask Lord Byron to assist me in 
sending a remittance for your journey ; because 
there are men, however excellent, from whom we 
would never receive an obligation, in the worldly 
sense of the word ; and I am as jealous for my 
friend as for myself ; but I suppose that I shall at 
last make up an impudent face, and ask Horace 
Smith to add to the many obligations he has 
conferred on me. I know I need only ask. 

I think I have never told you how very much I 
like your " Amyntas ;" it almost reconciles me to 
translations. In another sense I still demur. You 
might have written another such poem as the 
" Nymphs," with no great access of efforts. I am 



full of thoughts and plans, and should do some- 
thing, if the feeble and irritable frame which 
incloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy 
that then I should do great things. Before this 
yon will have seen " Adonais." Lord Byron, I 
suppose from modesty, on account of his being 
mentioned in it, did not say a word of "Adonais," 
though he was loud in his praise of " Prometheus," 
and, what you will not agree with him in, censure 
of " the Cenci." Certainly, if « Marino Faliero " 
is a drama, " the Cenci " is not — but that between 
ourselves. Lord Byron is reformed, as far as 
gallantry goes, and lives with a beautiful and 
sentimental Italian lady, who is as much attached 
to him as may be. I trust greatly to his intercourse 
with you, for his creed to become as pure as he 
thinks his conduct is. He has many generous and 
exalted qualities, but the canker of aristocracy 
wants to be cut out. 



LETTER LIX. 
To HORATIO SMITH, Esq. 

Pisa, Sept. Uth, 1821. 

My dear Smith, — I cannot express the pain 
and disappointment with which I learn the change 
in your plans, no less than the afflicting cause of 
it. Florence will no longer have any attractions 
for me this winter, and I shall contentedly sit 
down in this humdrum Pisa, and refer to hope and 
to chance the pleasure I had expected from your 
society this winter. What shall I do with your 
packages, which have now, I believe, all arrived at 
Guebhard's at Leghorn ? Is it not possible that a 
favourable change in Mrs. Smith's health might 
produce a corresponding change in your deter- 
minations, and would it, or would it not, be 
premature to forward the packages to your present 
residence, or to London ? I will pay every 
possible attention to your instructions in this 
regard. 

I had marked down several houses in Florence, 
and one especially on the Arno, a most lovely 
place, though they asked rather more than perhaps 
you would have chosen to pay — yet nothing 
approaching to an English price. — I do not yet 
entirely give you up. — Indeed, I should be sorry 
not to hope that Mrs. Smith's state of health 
would not soon become such, as to remove your 
principal objection to this delightful climate. I 
have not, with the exception of three or four days, 
suffered in the least from the heat this year. 
Though, it is but fair to confess, that my tem- 
perament approaches to that of the salamander. 

We expect Lord Byron here in about a 
fortnight. I have just taken the finest palace 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



157 



in Pisa for him, and his luggage, and his horses, 

and all his train, arc, I believe, already on their 
way hither. I dare say you have heard of the 
life he led at Venice, rivalling the wise Solomon 
almost, in the number of his concubines. Well, he 
is now quite informed, and is leading a most sober 
and decent life, as cavaliere servente to a very 
pretty Italian woman, who has already arrived at 
Pisa, with her father and her brother, (such are 
the manners of Italy,) as the jackals of the lion. 
He is occupied in forming a new drama, and, with 
views which I doubt not will expand as he 
proceeds, is determined to write a series of plays, 
in which he will follow the French tragedians and 
Alfieri, rather than those of England and Spain, 
and produce something new, at least, to England. 
This seems to me the wrong road ; but genius like 
his is destined to lead and not to follow. He will 
shake off his shackles as he finds they cramp him. 
I believe he will produce something very great ; 
and that familiarity with the dramatic power of 
human nature, will soon enable him to soften down 
the severe and unharmonising traits of his " Marino 
Faliero." I think you know Lord Byrcn 
personally, or is it your brother ? If the latter, I 
know that he wished particularly to be introduced 
to you, and that he will sympathise, in some degree, 
in this great disappointment which I feel in the 
change, or, as I yet hope, in the prorogation of 
your plans. 

I am glad you like "Adonais," and, particu- 
larly, that you do not think it metaphysical, 
winch I was afraid it was. I was resolved to pay 
some tribute of sympathy to the unhonoured dead, 
but I wrote, as usual, with a total ignorance of the 
effect that I should produce. — I have not yet seen 
your pastoral drama ; if you have a copy, could 
you favour me with it? It will be six months 
before I shall receive it from England. I have 
heard it spoken of with high praise, and I have the 
greatest curiosity to see it. 

The Gisbornes promised to buy me some books 
in Paris, and I had asked you to be kind enough to 
advance them what they might want to pay for 
them. I cannot conceive why they did not 
execute tins little commission for me, as they knew 
how very much I wished to receive these books by 
the same conveyance as the filtering-stone. Dare 
I ask you to do me the favour to buy them ? A 
complete edition of the works of Calderon, and the 
French translation of Kant, a German Faust, and 
to add the Nympholept ? — I am indifferent as to a 
little more or less expense, so that I may have 
them immediately. I will send you an order on 
Paris for the amount, together with the thirty-two 
francs you were kind enough to pay for me. 



All public attention is now centred on the won- 
derful revolution in Greece. I dare not, after the 
events of last winter, hope that slaves can become 
freemen so cheaply ; yet I know one Greek of the 
highest finalities, both of courage and conduct, the 
Prince Mavrocordato, and if the rest be like him, 
all will go well. — The news of this moment is, that 
the Russian army has orders to advance. 

Mrs. S. unites with me in the most heartfelt 
regret, And I remain, my dear Smith, 
Most faithfully yours, 

P. B. S. 

If you happen to have brought a copy of Clarke's 
edition of Queen Mab for me, I should like very 



' well to see it. — I really hardly know what this poem 
is about. I am afraid it is rather rough. 



LETTER LX. 
To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq. 

Pisa, October 22, 1821. 

My dear Gisborne, — At length the post brings 
a welcome letter from you, and I am pleased to be 
assured of your health and safe arrival. I expect 
with interest and anxiety the intelligence of your 
progress in England, and how far the advantages 
there, compensate the loss of Italy. I hear from 
Hunt that he is determined on emigration, and if 
I thought the letter would arrive in time, I should 
beg you to suggest some advice to him. But you 
ought to be incapable of forgiving me the fact of 
depriving England of what it must lose when Hunt 
departs. 

Did I tell you that Lord Byron comes to settle 
at Pisa, and that he has a plan of writing a perio- 
dical work in conjunction with Hunt ? His house, 
Madame Felichi's, is already taken and fitted up 
for him, and he has been expected every day these 
six weeks. La Guiccioli, who awaits him impa- 
tiently, is a very pretty, sentimental, innocent 
Italian, who has sacrificed an immense fortune for 
the sake of Lord Byron, and who, if I know any- 
thing of my friend, of her and of human nature, 
will hereafter have plenty of leisure and opportu- 
nity to repent her rashness. Lord Byron is, how- 
ever, quite cured of his gross habits^ as far as 
habits ; the perverse ideas on which they were 
formed, are not yet eradicated. 

We have furnished a house at Prsa, and mean 
to make it our head-quarters. I shall get all my 
books out, and entrench myself like a spider in a 
web. If you can assist P. in sending them to 
Leghorn, you would do me an especial favour ; but 
do not buy me Calderon, Faust, or Kant, as H. S. 
promises to send them me from Paris, where I 



158 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



suppose you had not tiiuo to procure them. Any 
other books you or lleury think would accord with 
my design. Oilier will furnish you with. 

1 should like very much to hear what is said of 
niv "Adonais," and you would oblige me by cutting 
out, or making Oilier cut out, any respectable 
criticism on it and sending it me ; you know I do 
not mind a crown or two in postage. The Epipsy- 
chidion is a mystery ; as to real flesh and blood, 
yon know that I do not deal in those articles ; you I 
might as well go to a gin-shop for a leg of mutton, 
gpeot anything human or earthly from me. 
I desired Oilier not to circulate this piece except 
to the avveToi, and even they, it seems, are inclined 
to approximate me to the circle of a servant girl 
and her sweetheart. But I intend to write a 
Symposium of my own to set all this right. 

I am just finishing a dramatic poem, called 
Hellas, upon the contest now raging in Greece — 
a sort of imitation of the Persse of ^Eschylus, full , 
of lyrical poetry. I try to be what I might have 
been, but am not successful. I find that (I dare j 
say I shall quote wrong,) 

" Den herrliehsten, den sich der Geist emprangt 
Drangt immer fremd und fremder Stoff sich an." 

The Edinburgh Review lies. Godwin's answer 
to Malthus is victorious and decisive ; and that 
it should not be generally acknowledged as such, 
is full evidence of the influence of successful evil 
and tyranny. What Godwin is, compared to Plato 
and Lord Bacon, we well know ; but compared 
with these miserable sciolists, he is a vulture to 
a worm. 

I read the Greek dramatists and Plato for ever. 
You are right about Antigone ; how sublime a 
picture of a woman ! and what think you of the I 
choruses, and especially the lyrical complaints of | 
the godlike victim ? and the menaces of Tiresias, i 
and their rapid fulfilment ? Some of us have, in a 
prior existence, been in love with an Antigone, 
and that makes us find no full content in any 
mortal tie. As to books, I advise you to five near 
the British Museum, and read there. I have read, 
since I saw you, the " Jungfrau von Orleans" of 
Schiller, — a fine play, if the fifth act did not fall 
off. Some Greeks, escaped from the defeat in 
Wallachia, have passed through Pisa to re-embark 
at Leghorn for the Morea ; and the Tuscan 
Government allowed them, during their stay and 
passage, three lire each per day and their lodging ; 
that is good. Remember me and Mary most 
kindly to Mrs. Gisborne and Henry, and believe 
me, 

Yours most affectionately, 

P. B. S. 



LETTER LXL* 
To J. SEVERN, Esq. 

Pisa, November 20th, 1821. 

Dear Sir, — I send you the elegy on poor Keat3 
— and I wish it were better worth your acceptance. 
You will see, by the preface, that it was written 
before I could obtain any particular account of his 
last moments ; all that I still know, was commu- 
nicated to me by a friend who had derived his 
information from Colonel Finch ; I have ventured 
to express, as I felt, the respect and admiration 
which your conduct towards him demands. 

In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never 
was, nor ever will be, a popular poet ; and the 
total neglect and obscurity in which the astonis h i n g 
remnants of his mind still He, was hardly to be 
dissipated by a writer, who, however he may differ 
from Keats in more important qualities, at least 
resembles him in that accidental one, a want of 
popularity. 

I have little hope, therefore, that the poem I 
send you will excite any attention, nor do I feel 
assured that a critical notice of his writings would 
find a single reader. But for these considerations, 
it had been my intention to have collected the 
remnants of his compositions, and to have pub- 
lished them with a life and criticism. — Has he left 
any poems or writings of whatsoever kind, and in 
whose possession are they ? Perhaps you would 
oblige me by information on this point. 

Many thanks for the picture you promise me : 
I shall consider it among the most sacred relics of 
the past. 

For my part, I little expected, when I last saw 
Keats at my friend Leigh Hunt's, that I should 
survive him. 

Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hopo to 
have the pleasure of seeing you, and of cultivating 
an acquaintance into something pleasant, begun 
under such melancholy auspices. 

Accept, my dear sir, the assurances of my sincere 
esteem, and believe me, Your most sincere and 
faithful servant, Percy B. Shelley. 

Do you know Leigh Hunt ? I expect him and 
his family here every day. 



LETTER LXII. 
To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq. 

Pisa, April 10, 1822. 
My dear Gisborne, — I have received Hellas, 
which is prettily printed, and with fewer mistakes 

* The original of this letter is in the possession of the 
Rev. T. Wilkinson. 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



15.0 



than any poem I ever published. Am I to thank 
you for the revision of the press ? or who acted 
as midwife to this last of my orphans, introducing 
it to oblivion, and me to my accustomed failure % 
May the cause it celebrates be more fortunate 
than either ! Tell me how you like Hellas, and 
give me your opinion freely. It was written 
without much care, and in one of those few 
moments of enthusiasm which now seldom visit 
me, and which make me pay dear for their visits. 
I know what to think of Adonais, but what to 
think of those who confound it with the many 
bad poems of the day, I know not. 

I have been reading over and over again Faust, 
and always with sensations which no other com- 
position excites. It deepens the gloom and aug- 
ments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore 
seem to me an unfit study for any person who is 
a prey to the reproaches of memory, and the 
delusions of an imagination not to be restrained. 
And yet the pleasure of sympathising with emotions 
known only to few, although they derive their sole 
charm from despair, and the scorn of the narrow 
good we can attain in our present state, seems 
more than to ease the pain which belongs to them. 
Perhaps all discontent with the less (to use a 
Platonic sophism,) supposes the sense of a just 
claim to the greater, and that we admirers of 
Faust are on the right road to Paradise. Such 
a supposition is not more absurd, and is certainly 
less demoniacal, than that of Wordsworth, where 
he says — 

11 This earth, 
Which is the world of all of us, and where 
We find our happiness, or not at all." 
As if, after sixty years' suffering here, we were to 
be roasted alive for sixty million more in hell, or 
charitably annihilated by a coup de grace of the 
bungler who brought us into existence at first ! 

Have you read Calderon's Magico Prodigioso? 
I find a striking singularity between Faust and 
this drama, and if I were to acknowledge Cole- 
ridge's distinction, should say Goethe was the 
greatest philosopher, and Calderon the greatest 
poet. Cyprian evidently furnished the germ of 
Faust, as Faust may furnish the germ of other 
poems ; although it is as different from it in 
structure and plan as the acorn from the oak. 
I have — imagine my presumption — translated 
several scenes from both, as the basis of a paper 
for our journal. I am well content with those 
from Calderon, which in fact gave me very little 
trouble ; but those from Faust — I feel how im- 
perfect a representation, even with all the licence 
I assume to figure to myself how Goethe would 
have written in English, my words convey. No 
one but Coleridge is capable of this work. 



We have seen here a translation of some scenes, 
and indeed the most remarkable ones, accom- 
panying those astonishing etchings which have 
been published in England from a German master. 
It is not bad — and faithful enough — but how 
weak ! how incompetent to represent Faust ! I 
have only attempted the scenes omitted in this 
translation, and would send you that of the 
Walpurgisnacht, if I thought Oilier would place 
the postage to my account. What etchings those 
are ! I am never satiated with looking at them ; 
and, I fear, it is the only sort of translation of 
which Faust is susceptible. 1 never perfectly 
understood the Hartz Mountain scene, until I 
saw the etching ; and then, Margaret in the 
summer-house with Faust ! The artist makes 
one envy his happiness that he can sketch such 
things with calmness, which I only dared look 
upon once, and which made my brain swim round 
only to touch the leaf on the opposite side of 
which I knew that it was figured. Whether it 
is that the artist has surpassed Faust, or thr.t 
the pencil surpasses language in some subjects, 
I know not, or that I am more affected by a 
visible image, but the etching certainly excited 
me far more than the poem it illustrated. Do 
you remember the fifty-fourth letter of the first 
part of the " Nouvelle Heloise ?" Goethe, in a 
subsequent scene, evidently had that letter in 
his mind, and this etching is an idealism of it. 
So much for the world of shadows ! 

What think you of Lord Byron's last volume ? 
In my opinion it contains finer poetry than has 
appeared in England since the publication of 
Paradise Regained. Cain is apocalyptic — it is a 
revelation not before communicated to man. I 
write nothing but by fits. I have done some of 
Charles I.; but although the poetry succeeded 
very well, I cannot seize on the conception of the 
subject as a whole, and seldom now touch the 
canvas. You know I don't think much about 
Reviews, nor of the fame they give, nor that they 
take away. It is absurd in any Review to criticise 
Adonais, and still more to pretend that the verses 
are bad. Prometheus was never intended for 
more than five or six persons. 

And how are you getting on ? Do your plans 
still want success 1 Do you regret Italy ? or any 
thing that Italy contains ? And in case of an 
entire failure in your expectations, do you think of 
returning, here ? You see the first blow has been 
made at funded property :-*— do you intend to con- 
fide and invite a second ? You would already 
have saved something per cent., if you had in- 
vested your property in Tuscan land. The next 
best thing would be to invest it in English, and 



ItfO 



LETTERS I'KO.M ITALY. 



reads upon it. I tremble for the consequences, 
to jou personally, from a prolonged confidence in 
the funds. Justice, policy, the hopes of the nation 
and renewed institutions, demand your ruin, and 
1, for one, cannot bring myself to desire what is in 
itself desirable, till yon are free. Yon see how 
liberal I am of advice ; but you know the motives 
that suggest it. What is Henry about, and how 
are his prospects \ Tell him that some adven- 
turers are engaged upon a steam-boat at Leghorn, 
to make the trajet we projected. I hope he is 
charitable enough to pray that they may succeed 
better than we did. 

Remember me most affectionately to Mrs. Gis- 
borne, to whom, as well as to yourself, I consider 
that this letter is written. How is she, and how 
are you all in health ? And pray tell me, what 
are your plans of life, and how Henry succeeds, 
and whether he is married or not % How can I 
send you such small sums as you may want for 
postages, &c, for I do not mean to tax with my 
unreasonable letters both your purse and your 
patience ? We go this summer to Spezzia ; but 

direct as ever to Pisa, — Mrs. will forward 

our letters. If you see anything which you think 
would particularly interest me, pray make Oilier 
pay for sending it out by post. Give my best and 

affectionate regards to H , to whom I do not 

write at present, imagining that you will give 
him a piece of this letter. 

Ever most faithfully yours, P. B. S. 



LETTER LXIII. 

To * * Esq. 

Pisa, April Uth, 1822, 
My dear * * — I have, as yet, received neither 
the * * *, nor his metaphysical companions — Time, 
my Lord, has a wallet on his hack, and I suppose he 
has bagged them by the way. As he has had a 
good deal of alms for oblivion out of me, I think 
he might as well have favoured me this once ; I 
have, 1 indeed, just dropped another mite into his 
treasury, called Hellas, which I know not how to 
send to you ; but I dare say, some fury of the Hades 
of authors will bring one to Paris. It is a poem 
written on the Greek cause last summer — a sort 
of lyrical, dramatic, nondescript piece of business. 
You will have heard of a roxo we have had here, 
which, I dare say, will grow to a serious size 
before it arrives at Paris. It was, in fact, a 
trifling piece of business enough, arising from 
an insult of a drunken dragoon, offered to one of 
our party, and only serious, because one of Lord 
B.'s servants wounded the fellow dangerously with 



a pitchfork. He is now, however, recovering, 
and the echo of the affair will be heard long after 
the. original report has erased. 

Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of 
Moore to him,* in which Moore speaks with great 
kindness of me ; and of course I cannot but feel 
flattered by the approbation of a man, my in- 
feriority to whom I am proud to acknowledge. — 
Amongst other things, however, Moore, after 
giving Lord B. much good advice about public 
opinion, &c, seems to deprecate my influence on 
his mind, on the subject of religion, and to attri- 
bute the tone assumed in " Cain'' to my suggestions. 
Moore cautions him against my influence on this 
particular, with the most friendly zeal ; and it is 
plain that his motive springs from a desire of bene- 
fiting Lord B., without degrading me. I think 
you know Moore. Pray assure him that I have 
not the smallest influence over Lord Byron, in this 
particular, and if I had, I certainly should employ 
it to eradicate from his great mind the delusions 
of Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem 
perpetually to recur, and to lay in ambush for the 
hours of sickness and distress. " Cain" was con- 
ceived many years ago, and begun before I saw him 
last year at Ravenna. How happy should I not 
be to attribute to myself, however indirectly, any 
participation in that immortal work ! — I differ 
with Moore in thinking Christianity useful to the 
world ; no man of sense can think it true ; and 
the alliance of the monstrous superstitions of the 
popular worship with the pure doctrines of the 
Theism of such a man as Moore, turns to the 
profit of the former, and makes the latter the 
fountain of its own pollution. I agree with him, 
that the doctrines of the French, and Material 
Philosophy, are as false as they are pernicious ; 
but still they are better than Christianity, inas- 
much as anarchy is better than despotism ; for 
this reason, that the former is for a season, and 
that the latter is eternal. My admiration of the 
character, no less than of the genius of Moore, 
makes me rather wish that he should not have an 
ill opinion of me. 

Where are you ? We settle this summer near 
Spezzia ; Lord Byron at Leghorn. May not I 
hope to see you, even for a trip in Italy ? I hope 
your wife and little ones are well. Mine grows a 
fine boy, and is quite well. 

I have contrived to get my musical coals zt 
Newcastle itself. — My dear * * believe me, 

Faithfully yours, P. B. S. 

* For Mr. Moore's account of this incident, and his 
own feelings and opinions on the subject— those imputed 
to him by Shelley being purely conjectural— see Moore's 
Life of Byron, Vol. II. p. 584, first edition. 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



161 



LETTER LXIV. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

(AT SI'EZZIA.) 

[Lerici, Sunday, April 28th, 1822.] 
Dearest Mary, — I am this moment arrived at 
Lerici, where I am necessarily detained, waiting 
the furniture, which left Pin last night at mid- 
night ; and as the sea has been calm, and the wind 
fair, I may expect them every moment. It would 
not do to leave affairs here? in an impiccio, great 
as is my anxiety to see you. — How are you, my 
best love ? How have you sustained the trials of 
the journey ? Answer me this question, and how 
my little babe and C * * * are. 

Now to business : — Is the Magni House taken \ 
if not, pray occupy yourself instantly in finishing 
the affair, even if you are obliged to go to Sarzana, 
and send a messenger to me to tell me of your 
success. I, of course, cannot leave Lerici, to which 
place the boats (for we were obliged to take two,) are 
directed. But you can come over in the same boat 
that brings this letter, and return in the evening. 
I ought to say that I do not think that there is 
accommodation for you all at this inn ; and that, 
even if there were, you would be better off at 
Spezzia ; but if the Magni House is taken, then 
there is no possible reason why you should not 
take a row over in the boat that will bring this — 
but don't keep the men long. I am anxious to 
hear from you on every account.* 

Ever yours, S. 

* I insert a few extracts from the Journal of Williams, 
as affording a picture of Shelley's habits during these last 
months of his life. How full he was of hope, life and 
love, when lost to us for ever ! 

" Sunday, April 28th. 

"Fine. Arrive at Lerici at 1 o'clock— the harbour- 
master called. Not a house to be had. On our telling 
him we had brought our furniture, his face lengthened 
considerably, for he informed us that the dogana would 
amount to £300 English, at least. Dined, and resolved 
on sending our things back without unlading— in fact, 
found ourselves in a devil of a mess. S. wrote to Mary, 
whom we heard was at Spezzia 

" Monday, 29th. 

" Cloudy. Accompanied the harbour-master to the 
chief of the ciistoms at Spezzia. Found him exceedingly 
polite, and willing to do all that lay in his power to assist 
us. He will, therefore, take on himself to allow the fur- 
niture to come on shore when the boats arrive, and then 
consider our house as a sort of depot, until further leave 
from the Genoa government. Returned to Lerici somewhat 
calmed. Heard from Mary at Sarzana, that she had con- 
cluded for Casa Magni — but for ourselves no hope. 

" Wednesday, May 1st. 

" Cloudy, with rain. Came to Casa Magni after break- 
fast ; the Shelleys having contrived to give us rooms. 
Without them, heaven knows what we should have done. 
Employed all day putting the things away. All comfort- 
ably settled by four. Passed the evening in talking over 
our folly and our troubles. 



LETTER LXV. 
To HORATIO SMITH, Esq. 

(VEE8AILLE8.) 

Lerici, May, 1822 
My dear Smith, — It is some time since 1 have 
heard from you ; are you still at Versailles ? Do 
you still cling to France, and prefer the arts and 
conveniences of that over-civilised country to the 
beautiful nature and mighty remains of Italy ? 
As to me, like Anacreon's swallow, 1 have left my 
Nile, and have taken up my summer quarters 
here, in a lonely house, close by the sea-side, sur- 
rounded by the soft and sublime scenery of the 
gulf of Spezzia. I do not write ; I have lived too 
long near Lord Byron, and the sun has extin- 
guished the glow-worm ; for I cannot hope, with 
St. John, that " the light came into the world, and 
the world knew it not." 

The object of my present letter is, however, a 
request, and as it concerns that most odious of 
all subjects, money, I will put it in the shortest 
shape — Godwin's law-suit, he tells us, is decided 
against him ; and he is adjudged to pay ,£'400. 
He writes, of course, to his daughter in the 
greatest distress : but we have no money except 
our income, nor any means of procuring it. My 
wife has sent him her novel, which is now finished, 
the copyright of which will probably bring him 
,£300 or j£400 — as Oilier offered the former sum 
for it, but as he required a considerable delay for 
the payment, she rejected his offer. Now, what I 
wish to know is, whether you could with conve- 

" Thursday May 2d\ 

" Cloudy, with intervals of rain. Went out with Shelley 
in the boat— fish on the rocks— bad sport. Went in the 
evening after some wild ducks — saw nothing but sublime 
scenery, to which the grandeur of a storm greatly contri- 
buted. 

" Friday, May 3d, 

" Fine. The captain of the port dispatched a vessel for 
Shelley's boat. Went to Lerici with S., being obliged to 
market there ; the servant having returned from Sarzana 
without being able to procure anything. 

" Saturday, Mi . Ah. 

" Fine. Went fishing with Shelley. No sport. Loitered 
away the whole day. In the evening tried the rocks again, 
and had no less than thirty baits taken off by the small 
fish. Returned late— a heavy swell getting up. I think 
if there are no tides in the Mediterranean, that there are 
strong currents, on which the moon, both at the full and 
at the change, has a very powerful effect ; the swell this 
evening is evidently caused by her influence, for it is quite 
calm at sea. 

"Sunday, May 5th. 

" Fine. Kept awake the whole night by a heavy swell, 
which made a noise on the beach like the discharge of 
heavy artillery. Tried with Shelley to launch the small 
fiat-bottomed boat through the surf; we succeeded in 
pushing it through, but shipped a sea on attempting to 
land. Walk to Lerici along the beach, by a winding path 
on the mountain's side. Delightful evening— the scenery 
most sublime. 



162 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



nienoe lend DM the .£100 which you once dedi- 
cated to this service, and allow Godwin to have it, 
under the precautions and stipulations which 1 
formerly annexed to its employment. You could 
not obviously allow this money to lie idle waiting 
for this event, without interest 1 forgot this part 
of the business till this instant, and now I reflect 
that I ought to have assured you of the regular 



" Monday, May 6th. 

"Fine. Soma heavy dropa of rain fell to-day, without a 
cloud being: visible. Made a sketch of the western side of 
the hay. Read a little. Walked with Jane up the mountain. 

" After lea, walking with Shelley on the terrace, and 
observing the effect of moonshine on the waters, he com- 
plained tif being unusually nervous, and stopping short, 
he grasped me violently by the arm, and stared stedfastly 
on the white surf that broke upon the beach under our 
feet. Observing him sensibly affected, I demanded of him 
if be were in pain ? But he only answered, by saying, 
' There it is again— there ! ' He recovered after some 
time, and declared that he saw, as plainlv as he then saw 
me, a naked child, (the child of a friend, who had lately 
died,) rise from the sea, and clap its hands as in joy, 
smiling at him. This was a trance that it required some 
reasoning and philosophy entirely to awaken him from, 
so forcibly had the vision operated on his mind. Our con- 
versation, which had been at first rather melancholy, led 
to this; and my confirming his sensations, by confessing 
that I had felt the same, gave greater activity to his ever- 
wandering and lively imagination. 

" Sunday, May 12th. 

" Cloudy and threatening weather. Wrote during the 
morning. Mr, Maglian, (harbour-master at Lerici), called 
after dinner, and while walking with him on the terrace, 
we discovered a strange sail coming round the point of 
Porto Venere, which proved at length to be Shelley's boat. 
She had left Genoa on Thursday, but had been driven 
back by prevailing bad winds. A Mr. Heslop and two 
English seamen brought her round, and they speak most 
highly of her performances. She does, indeed, excite my 
surprise and admiration. Shelley and I walked to Lerici, 
and made a stretch off the land to try her, and I find she 
fetches whatever she looks at. In short, we have now a 
perfect plaything for the summer. 

" Monday, May 13th. 

" Rain during night in torrents— a heavy gale of wind 
from S.W. and a surf running heavier than ever ; at 4 gale 
unabated, violent squalls. Walked to Lerici with Shel- 
ley and went on board. Called on M. Maglian, and found 
him anxiously awaiting the moment of a third child's 
birth. In the evening an electric arch forming in the 
clouds announces a heavy thunder-storm, if the wind lulls. 
Distant thunder — gale increases— a circle of foam sur- 
rounds the bay— dark, rainy, and tempestuous, with 
flashes of lightning at intervals, which give us no hope of 
better weather. The learned in these things say, that it 
generally lasts three days when once it commences as this 
has done. We all feel as if we were on board ship — and 
the roaring of the sea brings this idea to us even in our beds. 
" Tuesday, May 14£fc. 

" Clear weather, and the breeze greatly moderated ; con- 
trary to all the expectations and the prophecies of these 
would-be sailors— these weather-wise landsmen. While 
dressing this morning I saw the boat, under easy sail, 
bearing on and off land. At 9 we took her down, under 
top-sails and flying jib, to Spezzia ; and, after tacking 
round some of the craft there, returned to Lerici in an 
hour and a half— a distance, they say, of four leagues. 

On our return, we were hailed by a servant of Count S , 

a minister of the Emperor of Austria, who sent desiring 
to have a sail ; but before he could get on board, the wind 
had lulled into a perfect calm, and we only got into the 
swell, and made him sick. 

" Wednesday, May 15th. 

" F,ne and fresh breeze in puffs from the land. Jane 



payment of interest, which I omitted to mention, 
considering it a matter of course. 

I can easily imagine that circumstances may 
have arisen to make this loan inconvenient or im- 
e. — In any case, believe me, 
My dear Smith, 
Yours very gratefully and faithfully, 

P. B. Shelley. 



and Mary consent to take a sail. Run down to Porto 
Venere and beat back at 1 o'clock. The boat sailed like 
a witch. After the late gale the water is covered with 
purple nautili, or as the sailors call them, • Portuguesa 
men-of-war.' After dinner, Jane accompanied us to the 
point of the Magra ; and the boat beat back in wonderful 
style. 

" Saturday, May 18th. 

"Fine fresh breeze. Sailed with Shelley to the outer 
island, and find that there is another small one beyond, 
which we have named the Sirens' rock. This name was 
chosen in consequence of hearing, at the time we were 
beating to windward to weather it, a sort of murmuring, 
which, as if by magic, seemed to proceed from all parts of 
our boat, now on the sea, now here, now there. At length 
we found that a very small rope (or cord rather) had been 
fastened to steady the peak when the boat was at anchor, 
and being drawn extremely tight with the weight of the 
sail, it vibrated as the wind freshened. Being on the 
other tack as we approached, it ceased, and again as we 
stood off it recommenced its song. The Sirens' island 
was well named ; for standing in close to observe it, from 
a strong current setting towards it, the boat was actually 
attracted so close, that we had only time to tack, and save 
ourselves from its alluring voice. 

" Wednesday, May 22nd 

" Fine, after a threatening night. After breakfast 
Shelley and I amused ourselves with trying to make a 
boat of canvas and reeds, as light and as small as possible 
— she is to be eight and a half feet long, and four and a 
half broad. 

"Sunday, May 26th. 

" Cloudy. Rose at six, and went with Shelley and 
Maglian to Massa. The landing-place, or rather the 
beach, which is about three miles from the town, affords 
no kind of shelter, but where there is a continued sea 
running. A little to the left of the second gun-battery, 
is a shelf running parallel to the beach, at the termination 
of which five feet water may be had. This shelf is indicated 
by the shortness and frequency of the surf, and the deep 
water by a partial cessation of it. It is necessary before 
any effort is made to work her in — to send a strong stern- 
fast on shore for this purpose, as the current of the Magra 
sets forcibly to the eastward, and sweeps her suddenly 
into the surf beyond. We dined at Massa, and left it 
again at ten minutes past four, with a strong westerly 
wind straight in our teeth. This wind, (the Ponente as 
it is called) always sends a damp vapour from the sea, 
which gathers into watery clouds on the mountain tops, 
and generally sinks with the sun, but strengthens as he 
declines. To the landing-place it is said to be fifteen 
miles to Lerici. We left the latter place at a little past 
eight and arrived at eleven, and returned in seven hours. 
" Thursday, June 6th. 

" Calm. Left Villa Magni, at five, on our way to Via 
Reggio. At eight the wind sprung up, baffling in all 
directions but the right one. At eleven we could steer our 
course ; but at one it fell calm, and left us like a log on 
the water, but four miles to windward of Massa. We 
remained there till six ; the thunder-clouds gathering on 
the mountains around, and threatening to burst in squalls; 
heat excessive. At seven rowed into Massa beach — but on 
attempting to land we were opposed by the guard, who 
told us that the head person of the fort (of two rusty guns) 
being at Festa, that, as he was not able to read, we must 
wait till the former arrived. Not willing to put up with 
such treatment, Shelley told him at his peril to detain us 3 



LETTERS FROM ITALY. 



163 



LETTER LXVI. 

To * *. 

Lcrici, June 29th, 1822. 
My dear * *, — Pray thank Moore for his 
obliging message. I wish I could as easily convey 
my sense of his genius and character. I should 
have written to him on the subject of my late 
letter, but that I doubted how far I was justified in 
doing so ; although, indeed, Lord Byron made no 
secret of his communication to me. It seems to 
me that things have now arrived at such a crisis 
as requires every man plainly to utter his senti- 
ments on the inefficacy of the existing religion, no 
less than political systems, for restraining and 
guiding mankind. Let us see the truth, whatever 
that may be. The destiny of man can scarcely be 
so degraded, that he was born only to die ; and if 

when the fellow brought down two old muskets, and we 
prepared our pistols, which he no sooner saw we were de- 
termined to use, than he called our servant to the beach, 
and desiring him to hold the paper about a yard from him, 
he suffered two gentlemen who were bathing near the place 
to explain who and what we were. Upon this, the fellow's 
tone changed from presumption to the most cowardly 
fawning, and we proceeded to Massa unmolested. Slept 
at Massa, about three miles inland. 

" Friday, June 7th. 

" Left Massa at half-past five— a dead calm, the atmo- 
sphere hot and oppressive. At eight a breeze sprung up, 
which enabled us to lie up to Magra Point. Beat round 
the point and reached home at half -past two. 

" Wednesday, June 12th. 

" Launched the little boat, which answered our wishes 
and expectations. She is 86 lbs. English weight, and stows 
easily on board. Sailed in the evening, but were becalmed 
in the offing, and left there with a long ground-swell, 
which made Jane little better than dead. Hoisted out 
our little boat and brought her on shore. Her landing 
attended by the whole village. 

" Thursday, June 13th. 

•" Fine. At nine, saw a vessel between the straits of 
Porto Venere, like a man-of-war brig. She proved to be 
the Bolivar, with Roberts and Trelawny on board, who 
are taking her round to Livorno. On meeting them we 
were saluted by six guns. Sailed together to try the ves- 
sels — in speed no chance with her, but I think we keep as 
good a wind. She is the most beautiful craft I ever saw, 
and will do more for her size. She costs Lord Byron ^750 
clear off and ready for sea, with provisions and conve- 
niences of every kind. 

" Wednesday, June 19th. 

" Fine. The swell continues, and I am now the more 
persuaded that the moon influences the tides here, par- 
ticularly the new moon, on the first week before she 
makes her appearance. Took the ballast out and hauled 
the boat on the beach. Cleaned and greased her. 

" Thursday, June 20th. 

" Fine. Shelley hears from Hunt that he is arrived at 
Genoa . having sailed from England on the 13th May. 
" Saturday, June 22d. 

' ' Calm. Heat overpowering, but in the shade refreshed 
by the sea-breeze. At seven launched our boat with all 
her ballast in. She floats three inches lighter than before. 
This difference is caused, I imagine, by her planks having 
dried while on shore. 

" Thursday, June 27th. 

" Fine. The heat increases daily, and prayers are offer- 
ing for rain. At Parma it is now so excessive, that the 
labourers are forbidden to work in the fields after ten and 
before five, fearful of an epidemic." 



such should be the case, delusions, especially the 
gross and preposterous ones of the existing religion, 
can scarcely be supposed to exalt it. If every man 
said what he thought, it could not subsist a day. But 
all, more or less, subdue themselves to the element 
that surrounds them, and contribute to the evils they 
lament by the hypocrisy that springs from them. 

England appears to be in a desperate condition, 
Ireland still worse ; and no class of those who sub- I 
sist on the public labour will be persuaded that 
their claims on it must be diminished. But the 
government must content itself with less in taxes, 
the landholder must submit to receive less rent, 
and the fundholder a diminished interest, or they 
will all get nothing. I once thought to study these 
affairs, and write or act in them. I am glad that 
my good genius said, refrain. I see little public 
virtue, and I foresee that the contest will be one of 
blood and gold, two elements which however much 
to my taste in my pockets and my veins, I have an 
objection to out of them. 

Lord Byron continues at Leghorn, and has just 
received from Genoa a most beautiful little yacht, 
which he caused to be built there. He has written 
two new cantos of Don Juan, but I have not seen 
them. I have just received a letter from Hunt, 
who has arrived at Genoa. As soon as I hear 
that he has sailed, I shall weigh anchor in my little 
schooner, and give him chase to Leghorn, when I 
must occupy myself in some arrangements for him 
with Lord Byron. Between ourselves, I greatly 
fear that this alliance will not succeed ; for I, who 
could never have been regarded as more than the 
link of the two thunderbolts, cannot now consent 
to be even that ; and how long the alliance may 
continue, I will not prophesy. Pray do not hint 
my doubts on the subject to any one, or they might 
do harm to Hunt ; and they may be groundless. 

I still inhabit this divine bay, reading Spanish 
dramas, and sailing, and listening to the most 
enchanting music. We have some friends on a 
visit to us, and my only regret is that the summer 
must ever pass, or that Mary has not the same 
predilection for this place that I have, which would 
induce me never to shift my quarters. 

Farewell. — Believe me ever your affectionate 
friend, P. B. Shelley. 

LETTER LXVII. 

To Mrs. WILLIAMS. 

(CASA MAGNI.) 

Pisa, July 4,1822. 

You will probably see Williams before I can* 

disentangle myself from the affairs with which I 

" Monday, July 1st. 
* "Calm and clear. Rose at 4 to get the top-sails 
altered. At 12 a fine breeze from the westward tempted 



mmmm 



164 



LETTERS FROM ITALY.!, 



5JULJW- 



am now surrounded. I return to Leghorn to-night, 
and shall urge him to sail with the first fair wind, 
without expecting me. I have thus the pleasure 
of contributing to your happiness when deprived 
of every other, ami of leaving you no other subject 
of regret, but the absence of one scarcely worth 
regretting. I fear you are solitary and melancholy 
at Villa Magni, and, in the intervals of the greater 
and more serious distress in which I am compelled 
to sympathise here, I figure to myself the counte- 
nance which had been the source of such consola- 
tion to me, shadowed by a veil of sorrow. 

How soon those hours passed, and how slowly 
they return, to pass so soon again, perhaps for 
ever, in which we have lived together so intimately, 
so happily ! Adieu, my dearest friend ! I only 
write these hues for the pleasure of tracing what 
will meet your eyes. Mary will tell you all the 
news. S. 



LETTER LXVIII. 
To Mrs. SHELLEY. 

(CASA MAGNI.) 

Pisa, July 4, 1822. 
. My dearest Mary, — J have received both your 
letters, and shall attend to the instructions they 
convey. I did not think of buying the Bolivar ; 
Lord B. wishes to sell her, but I imagine would 
prefer ready money. I have as yet made no 
inquiries about houses near Pugnano — I have no 
moment of time to spare from Hunt's affairs ; I 

us to weigh for Leghorn. At 2 stretched across to Lerici 
to pick up Roberts ; and at half-past found ourselves in 
the offing, with a side wind. At half-past 9 arrived at 
Leghorn—a run of forty-five to fifty miles in seven hours 
and a half. Anchored astern the Bolivar, from which we 
procured cushions and made up for ourselves a bed on 
board, net being able to get on shore after sunset, on 
account cf the health-office being shut at that hour. 

" Tuesday, 2d. 

" Fine weather. We heard this morning that the Bolivar 
was about to sail for Genoa, and that Lord Byron was quit- 
ting Tuscany, on account of Count Gambia's family having 
again been exited tbence. This, on reaching the shore, 
I found really. to be the case; for they had just left the 
police-office, having there received the order. Met Lord 
Byron at Dunn's, and took leave of him. Was introduced 
to Mr. Leigh Hunt, and called on Mrs. Hunt. Shopped 
and strolled about all day. Met Lieutenant Marsham, of 
the Bochefort, an old school-fellow and shipmate. 

" Wednesday, 3d. 

" Fine strong sea-breezo. 

" Thursday, Uh. 

" Fine. Processions of priests and religiosi have for 
several days been active in their prayers for rain ; but 
the gods are either angry, or nature is too powerful." 



t 



am detained unwillingly here, and you will pro- 
bably see Williams in the boat before me, — bu 
that will be decided tomordow,^ 

Things are in the worst ^possible situation with 
respect to poor Hunt. I find Marianne in a des- 
perate state of health, and on our arrival at Tisa 
sent for Vacca. He decides that her case is hope- 
less, and that although it will be lingering, must 
inevitably end fatally. This decision he thought 
proper to communicate to Hunt ; indicating at the 
same time, with great judgment and precision, the 
treatment necessary to be observed for availing 
himself of the chance of his being deceived. This 
intelligence has extinguished the last spark of poor 
Hunt's spirits, low enough before. The children 
are well and much improved. 

Lord Byron is at this moment on the point of 
leaving Tuscany. The Gambas have been exiled, 
and he declares his intention of following their 
fortunes. His first idea was to sail to America, 
which was changed to Switzerland, then to Genoa, 
and last to Lucca. Everybody is in despair and 
everything in confusion. Trelawny was on the 
point of sailing to Genoa for the purpose of trans- 
porting the Bolivar overland to the lake of Geneva, 
and had already whispered in my ear his desire 
that I should not influence Lord Byron against 
this terrestrial navigation. He next received 
orders to weigh anchor and set sail, for Lerici. He is 
now without instructions, moody and disappointed. 
But it is the worst for poor Hunt, unless the present 
storm should blow over. He places his whole de- 
pendence upon the scheme of & journal, for which 
every arrangement has been made. Lord Byron 
must of course furnish the requisite funds at pre- 
sent, as I cannot ; but he seems inclined to depart 
without the necessary explanations and arrange- 
ments due to such a situation as Hunt's. These, 
in spite of delicacy, I must procure ; he offers him 
the copyright of the Vision of Judgment for the 
first number. This offer, if sincere, is more than 
enough to set up the journal, and, if sincere, will 
set everything right. 

How are you, my best Mary ? Write especially 
how is your health and how your spirits are, and 
whether you are not more reconciled to staying at 
Lerici, at least during the summer. 

You have no idea how I am hurried and occu- 
pied ; I have not a moment's leisure, but will 
write by next post. Ever, dearest Mary, Yours 
affectionately, S. 

I have found the translation of the Symposium. 



THE END. 



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